Rosalind

After I dropped Vera off, I headed back to my neighborhood but stayed parked in the darkened truck for a few minutes of peace and quiet before I had to reshape myself and try to find a way to fit in with this new family that I was living with for the foreseeable future. Part of me just wanted to start the truck, pick a direction and take off; just leave all the drama and constant anxiety behind.

Instead, I changed back and walked through the back alleys to Javi’s house. His family had made a nice meal and were trying to be as welcoming as possible. And it worked. I’d eaten with the Perez household a few times, and I always marveled at the warmth and generosity the parents showed to their two kids and vice versa. After the day I’d had, being able to sit at a crowded table and just enjoy the company of a family, even if it wasn’t my own, was exactly what I needed.

After filling my plate more than once, I excused myself down to the basement. I gleefully locked the door and checked the handle to make sure that it wouldn’t turn and settled in at the makeshift desk Javi had set my computer up on. I worried that my moms would make a big stink about that since they had technically purchased it and would be within their rights to demand it be returned. While I had it though, I settled in to read up on emancipation what avenues were available to me now that I was no longer living with my parents.

I slept better that night than I had in a while. Something about not worrying about my moms and their suspicions about me allowed me to relax enough to fall deeply into dream. It wasn’t one of those hyper-real dreams like I had soon after I found the shard. It was just really nice. Javi and Vera and I living in a cute little house and just being boring.

The next couple days passed with ease. I didn’t see my moms at all and it felt like a burden had been lifted off my shoulders. When my mind started to try to fret over the future, I just excommunicated those thoughts from my brain. I knew I’d have to deal with all that stuff soon, but I just wanted to live in the present while I could.

One night late in the week, Javi came down to the basement after supper. I heard the lock catch when he came down the stairs. “Hey, you gotta minute?” He asked. I’d been expecting this. He probably wanted some alterations. It was going to be a little weird to get all touchy with him, but it was the least I could do for all that he was doing for me.

“Sure, what’s up?” I asked, as if I didn’t already have some inkling as to what was coming.

“I was wondering if you could like do your thing? Like, I dunno, if it’s weird; you don’t have to. I thought if you didn’t mind…” and he seemed like he was going to continue on in that vein indefinitely if I didn’t interrupt.

“Yeah, it’s fine. I’m surprised you didn’t ask sooner, really.” And I motioned for him to sit down. I didn’t know if it would be weird for me to be my girl self while I was doing this, but it would make me a lot more comfortable so I asked Javi. “Is it alright if I shift to Rosalind?”

He actually let out a breath of relief when I asked. “Yeah, that’d be fine.” I could totally see how that would ease things along for him.

I changed with a thought and sat down on the inflated mattress near the lawn chair where Javi had placed himself. “So what would you like?”

“It’s weird. Like I dunno. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about it recently. Maybe it won’t be a big deal to you with your whole thing” And here he gestured at my supine form lounging on the bed comfortably in my oversized clothes. “But… ugh, I’ll just say it. Can you do some of the stuff like you do for yourself when you go to school? Like the androgynous stuff?”

I did not realize that he was going to go there, but I tried not to show surprise. I didn’t want him to feel uncomfortable. He’d always played at masculinity even if sometimes only jokingly, but I’d never known him to express any interest in androgyny. But then, neither had I until recently. “Sure, that’s easy. What in particular did you have in mind?”

“Oh, and I know you said you can’t create or destroy mass but like have you tried? To destroy it, I mean?” His words seemed to be piled up in his mouth and he had to take a second to explain himself. “I mean, like I got a lot of weight that I’d prefer not to have. Could you just like scoop it into one place and clip it off?”

That had not been something I had considered either. I guessed I could do that, but I was worried about pinching nerves or something. “I can try.” I said finally. “Can you take your shirt off?”

With some reluctance, he pulled his shirt over his head. I’d seen him without his shirt before but less and less over recent years. He’d put on weight after puberty and it was clear that it bothered him. I could only imagine how uncomfortable he must have felt in that moment. I determined to make this as easy as possible for him. I scooted near and held my hands near his belly before looking up to meet his eyes to get consent. He nodded and I got to work.

It was sort of like when I pulled my own flesh out except now, I created a little globe of skin and fat and once I had a nice-sized ball of it that I was sure wasn’t connected to any other vital organs; I pinched it off. I had no idea what to do with the globe of Javi flesh I held now independent of his body. I just set it aside for a moment and smoothed out the area I had just worked on. We agreed that I shouldn’t do too much since we didn’t want Javi to seem to be radically different.

“I liked the muscles I got on my arms the other day. Can you do that in other places too?” He asked, eyeing the strange ball of flesh sitting on the floor.

“Like where?”

“It’d be nice to have some in my legs, but not too much. And maybe some abs?”

“While I’m working on the legs, do you want to keep the hair there?” I asked. I hoped this wouldn’t turn out like the last time I had worked on someone’s legs. We both had enough stuff going on now, and I don’t think either of us wanted to add to that list.

“Not really, I mean, if it’s no trouble to get rid of.” He scooched around in his chair so that the shorts he was wearing rode a little higher. I discovered the first time I did it that making muscle was a little different than just moving fat around, but not particularly difficult, I just had to keep in mind what I was trying to do while doing it. I did his legs as high as I had access to, and it was thankfully not as intimate as what I had done with Vera.

“You might not want to wear shorts around the house so much if you don’t want to get questions about why you started shaving.” I suggested. “Okay, anything else?”

“I mean, I kinda already got boobs, but they’re umm… I don’t know how to say this.” And he looked away and I could see color rising into his cheeks.

“You want me to shape them into something a little more femme?” I asked, knowing the answer but phrasing the question so that he would only need to nod. Which he did, not looking me in the eyes. I don’t know if he was more worried about asking for this change or the fact that I would need to completely feel him up to do it.

I reached my hands and started the shaping. Once I got them into a good form, I simply asked “Keep the hair?” He shook his head and I got rid of all the curly bristles on his chest. I wanted to ask if he wanted a larger back end, but I think I had done enough for one sitting. He looked ready to dissolve into a pile of embarrassment.

He pulled his shirt back on afterwards and bounced up off his chair. The new muscles in his legs must have thrown him off balance and he took a moment to walk around and regain his equilibrium. He couldn’t keep the grin off his face though. “Thanks Roz. That does feel a lot better. Maybe we can do more some other time, you know, when I could feasibly lose more weight without it being weird.”

“Sure, no problem. Anytime. What do you want to do with that?” And I gestured at the cooling ball of flesh on the floor.

“Oh, I guess I’ll take it.” He said, his voice unsure.

“It’s not connected to any fresh blood, so it might start to…” I didn’t want to finish that sentence. The idea that I had cut off a piece of him that would start rotting soon was just too much to put into words, but he seemed to get the idea. He just nodded and picked up the little softball-sized globe and it jiggled in his hand; a balloon filled with a particularly thick liquid.

The next morning, there was a knock at the basement door. After a quick change, I answered the door to find Xochi, Javi’s mom and she said “Teddy, there are some men here that want to speak with you.” She looked worried. I couldn’t imagine who would be here unless my moms had sent the cops to come and forcefully drag me back home.

“I’ll be right up.” I told Xochi. It was the weekend, so I had hoped that I was going to get more time to myself this morning. When I entered the living room, I found two unfamiliar men in suits. One seated and enjoying a cup of coffee; the other standing near the door. I was suddenly on high-alert. These did not look like normal beat cops called in over a domestic squabble.

“Theodore Cole?” The seated one asked me when I entered the room.

“Yeah? Can I help you?” I tried not to look nearly as nervous as I felt.

“Mister Cole, I’m Agent Quincy. We’re here to follow up on some allegations regarding the suspicion of the use of magic.” The agent let the sentence sit in the room and his eyes drilled into me looking for any sign of something that might incriminate me.

“Magic? Wow, that’s a new one. Did my moms put you guys up to this?” I tried to mediate my voice and sound like someone who’s main concern was family issues and not magic use.

“We’re not at liberty to say, Mister Cole.”

I tried to make the play that I had with Mr. Gibson, the chemistry teacher. “Look, I’ve been umm… starting gender transition lately, and my moms are not on board. I guess I could see how using hormones might seem like magic though.”

My admission did catch them off guard and Xochi as well, if the gasp from the adjoining kitchen was anything to judge by. “Mister Cole, while I can see that you are in a unique situation, the government takes these allegations very seriously. While it may be as you say, we must be thorough.”

The agent then pulled out a large briefcase and began to unclasp it. I considered running, but caught sight of the guns holstered on the shoulders of both men. And the man standing at the door noticed me taking in the guns and smirked at me. If there were any doubt that I was a practitioner of magic, it was withdrawn when Agent Quincy pulled out an actual shard and sat it on a tripod-like object that he had pulled out of the briefcase.

The Agent noted the look of recognition on my face when he placed the shard on the tripod. “Seen one of these before, Mister Cole? Little known fact, they aren’t completely useless even once all their charges are gone.” And he flipped a switch at the base of the device.

The shard began to glow, much like the one that had empowered me when I first found it in the desert a month ago. I realized then that this was The Test. At first, I felt nothing. Then I felt surprisingly good, like really good. I don’t think the device had been triggered for more than ten seconds before I reached a peak of euphoria. It almost felt like an orgasm, but instead of cumming; I changed into my default form.

“Shit.” I said in my Rosalind voice.

“Those are some fantastic hormones, Mister Cole.” Agent Quincy said sardonically and flicked the device off. “So there’s a couple options available to you here. You can give up the shard and anyone else empowered by it or we can just torture you and you’ll tell us anyway. But if you tell us now, we won’t kill you when we’re done. We have a nice little facility where we take your kind. Our scientists will study you, sure. But you’ll get tv, games, and books. You’re not going to get a better deal.”

I stood dumbfounded. It was hard to focus on their offer, such as it was. I was still reeling from the fact that one or both of my moms had turned me in. Suddenly, I felt an overwhelming sense of anger, and not even at these two government stooges. I wanted to march across the street and beat my parents into the asphalt. Sadly, that was not an option. The agents seemed to be waiting for my reply.

I could not give up Javi and Vera. If they had to torture me, I only hoped that I could hold out long enough for them to get away. “I only used it on me, and then I got rid of it. Tossed it out of my truck and into the desert.”

“That seems unlikely, Mister Cole. Generally, when teenagers get one of these things, ninety-nine times out of a hundred; they share them with friends. What’s the point in having super powers if you’re the only one that knows about it?”

The agent continued saying “That’s why we’re so grateful to you Mister Cole, for leading us right to the home of the next suspect on our list.” The agent craned his head to shout towards the kitchen where Ms. Perez was no doubt continuing to eavesdrop. “Could we speak with Javier Perez now, please?”