Tess didn’t flinch as Aaron’s palm collided with the wood of the library desk she was sitting at.

“Take back what you’ve done, you…you witch!” He hissed, face red with anger.

Tess held up a finger, finishing the process of writing out the equation she was working on before placing her pencil down and giving Aaron a smile. “And what would that be?”

“You…you know!” He blustered. “You put some kind of curse on me or something! Hurry up and remove it!”

“Curse?” Tess asked, faking innocence. “Magic’s not real, so I don’t see how I could do something like that.”

Aaron grit his teeth. “You’re the only one who’s seen the stuff that’s been happening to me! You even winked at me once!”

“I haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re talking about. Are you sure I wasn’t…what was the phrase you used…ah, that’s right ‘making eyes at you’?

“I’ll ruin you.” Aaron replied. “I don’t care if you’re a witch or whatever, you won’t find any peace in this town, no, in this country.”

Tess gave him her best winning smile. “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, I am ‘a witch or whatever’. Wouldn’t I be able to do a lot more than just…minor pranks? Perhaps whatever you think you’re experiencing might only be a warning.”

Aaron paled slightly but glared at her indignantly regardless. “Not necessarily. You’re just trying to scare me off. If you could do worse, you would.”

Tess maintained her smile as best she could. “Aaron, not everyone goes straight for the throat like you.”

“A witch would.”

Tess looked carefully around and, once she was sure no one was watching, stood up. She took a moment to activate Induce Hopelessness, the degraded version of one of the Skills she had received from Isabella’s core, then placed a hand over the one Aaron still had on the desk.

The Skill was weaker on Mael than it normally was, but it was still enough to briefly freeze Aaron in place as she stood up on her tiptoes to speak into his ear. “Trust me, I can be a lot nastier if I want.” She whispered, extending a claw on the finger of her free hand.

Aaron watched in horror as she sliced the claw through the edge of the desk, cutting through it like it was made of butter. Tess took her hand off of his, giving him a smile.

Aaron fell onto the floor, looking up at Tess in terror. “You’re…you’re a monster!” He exclaimed. “I-I’m going to the church! They’re going to come and hunt you down!”

Tess held the finger to her lips, claw already retracted. “Quiet. We’re in the library. And, for the record, I’m on very good terms with the church, so go ahead and try to tell them about, I guarantee you’ll find no success. Now leave, I need to finish my homework.”

She sat down as if nothing had happened, picking up her pencil and resuming work on the problem.

“Y…you’re going to regret this!” Aaron said, scrambling back to his feet and slowly beginning to walk backwards.

Tess sighed, putting the pencil back down and turning back to face the trembling Aaron. “Really? Do you really want to play this game again? I won’t be so nice this time around, so, by all means, antagonize me more. I just want to live a quiet life here, but I’m getting real sick of people pushing me around because they think they can get away with it.

“Your parents may be some bigshots, but that doesn’t give you the right to walk all over people like they’re lesser because they weren’t born into money. Trust me when I say that, sometime in the future, you’re going to realize just how insignificant you are. When that time comes, come find me. Perhaps I’ll be willing to give you some advice.”

Her gaze hardened, and she made a shooing motion. “Now, get out of my sight. I need all the time I can get for this homework, and I don’t want to waste it arguing with someone too self-obsessed to realize that other humans are people too.”

Aaron turned around, going from slow back-walk to a run as he fled from Tess. In his place, Isabella remained, giving Tess a questioning look.

“Did I do…good? Should I continue?” She asked.

Tess smiled. “You did perfect. You can come back into me now, you don’t need to worry about him anymore.”

Isabella smiled, and floated back into Tess. Tess placed a hand on the gouge in the desk and muttered a mending spell, putting all the Mana she could muster into it. It wasn’t enough to fully heal the desk, not on Mael, but it was enough to make it appear as if it had just been nicked by something minor like a set of scissors.

A few moments later, one of the librarians rounded the corner. “Is everything OK, Tess?” He asked, giving her a worried look. “I heard a commotion.”

“It’s fine, Mr. Evans.” Tess replied. “Aaron was coming in to give me a hard time, but we worked it out. The desk got nicked, though, sorry.”

“That’s alright.” Mr. Evans said. “He didn’t hurt you, did he? He’s been acting…erratic lately and a few of us have been getting worried he might do something reckless.”

Tess shook her head. “No, I’m perfectly fine. He tried to threaten me and distracted me from my homework, but that’s all.”

 Mr. Evans sighed. “I’m going to need to write up an incident report, then. Let’s go back to my office, I need to know what he tried to do.”

Tess followed Mr. Evans back to his office, where he had her sit down at his desk. “Would you like some candy?” He asked, opening his drawer and holding up a piece of chocolate.

“Sure.” Tess replied, grabbing the chocolate and unwrapping it.

Mr. Evans sat down at his desk. “So, what exactly happened?”

Tess shrugged. “Do you want me to start from last time he tried this or now?”

Mr. Evans pinched the bridge of his nose. “He tried to threaten you before? Alright, start from there.”

“So, a few days ago I was in the library studying, and he came to me when we were alone. He claimed I had been ‘making eyes at him’ and ‘leading him on’ for months and said that I wasn’t allowed to just suddenly get a girlfriend and pretend I wasn’t.

“I told him I wasn’t and had no romantic interest in him, and he said I didn’t have to have romantic interest, I just wanted his money and used my looks to get him to treat me well. He told me to ‘take responsibility’ and, at the least, make a public apology or he’d make my school life miserable.

“I said no and told him not to mess with me or I’d have to try and deal with things. He said he wasn’t scared and that I had one week, and that was that.”

Mr. Evans groaned. “You know, you really shouldn’t have threatened him back. Not just because, as a faculty member, I’m obligated to tell you that, but because it’ll make things a lot harder if we try and get him in trouble. He’ll have at least some excuse for his behavior, flimsy as it is.”

Tess shrugged. “I know, I just…was done with dealing with him, you know? Anyway, today he barged in again and claimed told me to ‘take back what I’ve done’ and called me a witch. He said that I put some sort of curse on him and to fix it. I, of course, told him magic wasn’t real. We argued for a bit more, then he freaked out, told me he was gonna call the church on me and get them to hunt me down, like people still burn witches at the stake, and then ran away.”

Mr. Evans frowned. “And that’s all that happened?”

“Just about. How am I supposed to convince him I’m not some sort of witch? That’s an inherently unprovable statement.”

“Did anything else happen that you’re not telling me about?”

“Not…really?” Tess lied. “I mean, I could tell you about the paranormal things he claimed I did, but I don’t think that’s really important. It’s just gibberish.”

Mr. Evans gave another sigh. “Alright, you can go, then, I need to write this up. Let me know immediately if anything else happens, okay?”

Tess nodded, and left the office. The rest of the school day was uneventful, and she soon found herself in the car with Ellie.

“No need to wait for Isabella anymore.” She said. “We’ve dealt with Aaron, so she’ll be with me again.”

“Oh?” Ellie responded. “What happened?”

Tess relayed everything that happened while Ellie began driving. After hearing the story, Ellie gave her a worried look. “Are you sure you weren’t too reckless, showing him your claws like that? Rumors are going to start going around.”

“Let them.” Tess replied. “No one’s really going to believe that sort of stuff, and the desk definitely doesn’t have a gouge in it like he’s going to say. Besides, it’s not like I’m going to be around here much later on in life, so I don’t really see it coming back to bite me in the butt. Yes, I might have been reckless, but I think it was worth it. I’m done putting up with his crap and I don’t want to just sit there and take it anymore. Especially because he’s clearly attracted to me and I really don’t want to deal with that.”

“But…school’s going to get harder, Tess. You’re going to be ostracized, even if it’s just because of the rumor, not because he tells them to.”

Tess rolled her eyes. “Oh no, people I don’t really care about are going to avoid me for like three months, whatever am I going to do?” She said sarcastically. “Our friends aren’t going to care, and it doesn’t affect my relationship with you or anyone in the Outlands, so it doesn’t really bother me. Besides, we’re supposed to start introducing people to the Outlands and stuff anyway, so it works, right?

“Tess, I don’t think that’s how they wanted us to do it.” Ellie paused. “Alright, Death sent me a message, but I’m not reading it until we get home. I’m not taking my eyes off of the road. We’ll talk about that then, alright?”

So that particular conversated was halted until they got home, when Ellie took a moment whatever Death had sent her. “Fine, apparently your intimidation was technically within the realms of what we’re supposed to do, but it is a bit premature. Death says it’s fine if we do a couple of things here and there, but she wants us to hold off from spreading supernatural events in earnest until school’s over.”

“How much are we going to do that, by the way? I mean, I know we’re introducing Jacob to the Outlands and probably a few other people, but exactly how much are we going to let the town know?”

Ellie stared off into space, clearly reading a message. “Life says they want this place to be a paranormal hotspot. Like, world-famous level hotspot, they want this to be the place people go to if they’re investigating the supernatural. They say that you’re kind of integral to that plan, since you bring a lot of manpower to the table with Monster Breeder. You can make all sorts of different things happen.”

“What happens when the government inevitably gets involved?” Tess asked. “They can’t ignore something like that forever.”

Ellie read another message. “We’re apparently going to meet with the Prime Minister and explain everything ourselves. Well, us and Gramps, as envoys of the gods. So, um, that’s going to be a fun adventure, I guess?”

Tess laughed nervously. “That’s going to be kind of weird. It’s one thing to meet with all these other important people I’d never heard of before, but like…I dunno, the Prime Minister just feels more…real, you know?”

“I felt the same way about Life and Death.” Ellie said. “It’s just…weird. We’re important now, Tess.”

“Have not.” Tess countered. “I was basically a nobody until I moved in with Ellie and Gramps.”

“What are you talking about?” Ellie asked, confused.

Tess blushed. “Uh, Fortune sent a message saying ‘always have been’ when you said we were important now. And, you know, you were because you’re related to Gramps, but like…until Gramps adopted me, I was just some random kid.”

“But that’s just because my family was friends with Ellie’s. If we hadn’t been, I’d just be some orphan.”

“I’m not totally sure of the context, but don’t say that.” Ellie said firmly. “There’s no use talking about what ifs. In the end, a lot of important people are important because of an accident of birth. If I wasn’t related to Grandpa, I would just be some orphan too, so we’re in the same boat.”

Tess frowned. Even though they were in the middle of a conversation, something more important had occurred to her. “Ellie, I just realized. There’s magic that brings people back from the dead, right? Why…why didn’t Gramps bring your parents back?”

Ellie opened her mouth to speak, then shut it, staring off into space as she read a message. Tess wasn’t left out either, though, as Fortune gave her a message too.

Tess made eye contact with Ellie, who had presumably received a similar window. There was a brief moment while the two processed, and then Tess leaned in and gave Ellie a big hug.

“Sorry for bringing it up.” Tess mumbled. “I know it’s painful.”

“It’s just as painful for you.” Ellie replied. “And it was a question that was worth asking, so don’t feel bad about it. But, again, what’s done is done. We’re here now, and all we can do is keep moving forward.”

After a minute or so, they separated, though they were still holding hands.

“And for now, continuing forward means finishing our training.” Ellie said, pulling Tess towards the door to the Outlands. “So, let’s get this done. I want to be able to be in a party with you full-time as soon as possible, alright?”

Fighterman481

Hey folks, sorry if this chapter is lower quality than normal. I've been sick this past week and been kinda fuzzy in the head, but my editor assured me there weren't too many more errors than normal, so I'm hoping this should still be relatively OK. If it's not then...well, there's why I suppose.

(Note from present me: over the sickness by now. Head stayed fuzzy for a couple of weeks after the time of writing this author's note, but I've made a full recovery by now.)

Uh, that aside, the chapter. Well, I'm gonna be a bit brief because of said aforementioned head fuzziness, but there are a couple of things I want to touch on. First is that I actually wanted a scene similar to one in the beginning of this chapter back when Aaron first confronted Tess.

But I decided then was the wrong time and instead I had her flex her claws now. So...yeah.

And, um, also, the whole parents thing. I've been trying to find a way to drop that in for a while, since it could be seen as a plot hole without knowing the whole story behind it, and I wasn't actually planning to do it now, but things just sort of progressed that way and I took the opportunity.

Anywho, that's all for me, I'm going to forcibly cut myself off here before I start rambling too much. Next time we're gonna...probably do stuff with dungeons, since it's been a hot minute and we need to progress with Tess's training. Or maybe not. We'll see how it feels when I write it out, I suppose.

Oh, and, as always, thanks for reading!