“She doesn’t actually think you’re going to pick it up, right?” Lottie asked.

“It doesn’t matter what she thinks,” Mom responded.

She was about to reject the call when I interrupted.

“Just put her on speaker,” I mumbled.

Both of them looked at me in surprise.

“Are you… sure?” Lottie asked.

No, I was not, but the truth was that I couldn’t say what was really happening, but grandma could at least lead them to figuring some things out on their own, and I was willing to hear her voice again for that.

“She might not want what we want, but hearing her out can still give us something, even if it’s just in the way she says it…” I explained.

“Fine, if you say so, even if I hate it…” Mom said, before accepting the call in the speaker mode. “Mother.”

“Hello, daughter, by your tone I presume your child has told you at least some of what I said, and you want nothing to do with me now, so I’ll keep it brief – you should check your apartment for traces of dark energy, and then reconsider if you truly understand the situation as much as you think you do. That is all.” Her tone was cold, colder than usual, not even smugness could be heard in it.

“What is her game here? I don’t understand…” Mom commented.

“I mean… Does it hurt to check? If she’s lying, it’s easy to prove, and if she’s not… I’ve got no clue, but it’s better to know than not know, I guess…” Lottie said.

I simply nodded, having completely abandoned the idea of predicting what would happen next.

Mom transformed, and started checking, and of course, given what had happened the day prior, as well as demon Mom being super powerful, she found a fair bit. I managed to avoid getting scanned – I knew I didn’t have much, but I also had no idea how either of them would react to me having more than I should.

“I don’t understand, how would the Demon Queen or Demon Princess or whoever else this is know where you live? Isn’t that what secret identities are for?” Lottie asked.

“You’re the champions of truth, you wouldn’t keep secret identities if not for your inhibitions…” I suggested.

“He’s right, we do need our secret identities, but the reasons for that are much more mundane. The questions we should be asking is how did she know this had happened, how long had she known, and why did she keep it a secret until now. One thing is clear, she knows my trust in her is gone, and so she has no reason to hold anything back,” Mom explained.

“So, she doesn’t want us to trust the Demon Queen, her daughter, or both, which implies that perhaps we should, but… Just because we don’t trust her doesn’t mean our goals don’t align more than the alternative… I’ve got no clue what to do now…” Lottie lamented.

“We stay vigilant. The two of us can’t be targets, but there’s two other people living here, and one of them is the more likely target no matter who’s the enemy. We look out for anything suspicious, for any signs, and we do not, under any circumstances, let my baby not be protected by at least one of us. I will also keep an eye on my husband, of course, but I doubt he’s the target, otherwise this would have happened a long time ago,” Mom stated.

“Hell yeah! That sounds like a plan!” Lottie exclaimed, before turning to look at me. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to protect you, I promise!”

No matter how much I wanted to let her reassure me, I just couldn’t stop myself from feeling so ridiculous about being in this situation in the first place. I no longer felt simply gross, having graduated to feeling disgusting, and despite rationally knowing that she was far stronger and better than I could ever be, I still couldn’t help but feel the wrongness of her protecting me as I looked down at her.

“Thank you,” I said, with a smile as slight as it was fake.

~~~~~

By the time Wednesday had rolled around, I’d managed to invent a whole new way to be miserable, and there were a lot of reasons for that.

For one, being kept under constant watch, even if it was for my own protection, made it practically impossible to find a private moment to apologize to demon Mom, not that she hadn’t done her own fair share of avoiding me as well, so the guilt within me only rose, even if the number of lies and secrets stayed the same for once.

The main event, however, was definitely my powers acting up. I had now gotten the full brunt of my corruption senses, and it turned out that my family and Lottie had a rather large amount of resistance to being read, and so, as soon as I’d made it to school, I was absolutely assaulted by an absurd amount of sensory feedback, telling me what kinds of things people would do, were they not restraining themselves from it.

Many people seemed to be under the impression that were it not for the rules of society, or law, or even some god, humans, as a rule of thumb, would not be good. The observations I was making against my will had reassured me that was not the case, and that I was, indeed, a complete piece of trash compared to most. You would think that there being some people who were genuinely capable of doing things worse than I could have even imagined previously would make me feel better about myself, however, all that had done was make me feel even more miserable, scared, and helpless.

I was absolutely terrified of boys’ changing rooms, but luckily, my Mom had written me a note to excuse me in order to let Lottie keep an eye on me all the time, her P.E. record being more than spotless enough to be able to take the hit.

It was not all bad, of course – for example, I might not have gotten the name of that boy for whom my powers caused so much trouble, but I’d managed to pick up that he’d rather everybody forget said name instead, which I’d deemed fair enough. There was a reason people close to me never really used mine.

I’d also tried focusing on trying to figure out what Raine’s deal was, but what I’d got didn’t make any sense (unless she was literally incapable of lying), and she’d somehow noticed, and instead of asking for an explanation, she’d simply reprimanded me and requested I don’t do that again.

Aside from that, under the category of my powers acting up, was that my tank, so to speak, was filling up, and, in fact, it was almost full. I had no idea what would happen if I let it go over my limit, but I also knew I had no way to get rid of it without either transforming and being noticed, or somehow corrupting someone, which could cause Lottie and Mom to start jumping at shadows, and so, the timer was ticking, and I was only becoming more and more unfit to make any decision that could change that.

Nobody had told me that being full of energy would make me feel so bloated – or maybe it was just this body? The fuller of dark energy I became, the more clear to me it became that I really was not a human, and that being within a body of one was causing me mental pain. I had no idea how Moms managed to be this big without being disgusted, I didn’t know how demon Mom managed to stay like this for my entire life despite having infinitely more reasons than me to feel miserable about it, and most of all, I missed my tail!

There were a lot other things about my other body that it destroyed me not to have, but tail was the one that I allowed myself to acknowledge as valid!

I mean, a whole, entire limb that I simply didn’t have that I was supposed to have! How could anyone possibly live like this?!

Of course, my worsening state had not gone unnoticed by my protectors, and so, after school, knight Mom finally had the idea to check my levels of dark energy, and sure enough, my estimations were about right. I didn’t know how she could sense where my limits lied, when demon Mom couldn’t (or maybe she simply didn’t think to? I was ‘pathetically weak’ after all…), but regardless, all I could do was surrender myself to the wild goose chase.

Mom and Lottie decided to search for the Demon Queen and my true other form, and I had to come with them, since I couldn’t be left undefended, and that’s how we ended up in the same abandoned warehouse as last Friday.

“To be fair, it was extremely silly to expect them to just… hang out in here,” Lottie commented.

“Which is why it’s not the reason we’re here. Ideally, I would have done this back on Saturday, but I believe it should still be possible for me to track that teleport and find where they went on Friday,” Mom explained.

“That’s… how many abilities do you even have?” Lottie asked.

“That’s the secret, I come up with half of them on the spot, and I end up not using most of them ever again.” Mom smirked.

“But that’s so anticlimactic and… unsatisfying!” Lottie protested.

Mom was about to quip back, but then her hand stopped glowing, and her expression turned undecipherable.

“Oh.”

Magic seemed to have a thing for being dramatic, because just at that moment, something within me broke and I became full of dark energy.

“Heh… Nice timing,” I said, as I started to emit a purple glow.

Mom, to her credit, did not miss a bit.

“Lottie, step back!”

“But–” Lottie started.

“There’s nothing we can do now.”

Lottie nodded and joined Mom at what she deemed a safe distance as the world started to spin.

“But that doesn’t make any sense, there’s no way they could have pumped him with dark energy right under our noses while we were transformed! Unless…”

I started to let out the closest sounds to maddened giggling that my stupid, gross voice could produce.

“...that teleport went right to your place, didn’t it?” Lottie asked.

I started to spin together with the world, my hands outstretched. My head wasn’t too pleased, but it was an ugly head, so it didn’t matter what it liked and didn’t like.

“So much lying, so many secrets, all of them important, all of them justified, and yet… It’s so weird, but I can’t bring myself to care anymore,” I said, before resuming my laughter.

And just like that, I burst, a brilliant purple glow overwhelming my every sense yet again.

It was completely painless, yet I could feel my body get completely destroyed.

That body could die, though. It was useless, after all, and I had a much better one, which was left being unharmed.

The Demon Princess was back, and here to stay this time!

My giggling somehow continued through the entire process, but after the glow went out, my dark energy completely spent, it became so much cuter! More than that, it was no longer maddened – it was simply full of pure, unrestrained joy!

I stopped spinning just as I was facing knight Mom and Lottie, eager to share the good news.

“Look at me, isn’t this so much better? That ugly, stupid boy is gone, and instead it’s just me! Only me! Forever, if I have any say in it! I know I’m not supposed to like this, to even want this, but I do not care anymore, I’d rather live this beautiful lie than the cruel truth! And who can stop me? Even if I can change back, no one can force me! And this body is so great! Look, I can even spin all I want without getting dizzy!”

I started to spin again and almost immediately got dizzy and stopped, panting.

“Uhh…” Lottie elaborated.

“I would like to,” I took in a breath. “retract my previous statement, if that’s okay.”

Lottie was still frozen and speechless, but Mom got herself together enough to say, “That explains… so much.”

“It sure explains some things, alright,” Lottie added.

“But it doesn’t explain everything! Like how can the two of you live without tails of your own! Oh, I have one myself now, by the way, look!”

I stuck my tail out from behind me, and did my best attempt at a friendly wave.

I had to admit I was being extremely silly, but I was coming to realize that I loved being silly when I was happy, I’d just never been happy enough to find out! And I was extremely happy now!

Just as I was thinking that this moment could only be made better by one thing, a purple glow came from behind me, and when I turned around to inspect, demon Mom was there, just as I wanted!

“Mom!” I gasped in excitement, before running in to hug her.

While both of my Moms were really tall (at least from my superior perspective), they were built differently. Knight Mom was solidly built, with thick bones and firm structure that made her turning out to be a knight the most self-evident thing in the world. Demon Mom, on the other hand, was very curvy in a stereotypically attractive way that would be very flustering if she wasn’t so much Mom to completely overpower it, and that made her soft enough to be really nice to cuddle into.

I looked up from the hug without squeezing her any less.

“Hey Mom, I think I just outed you… again. Sorry,” I said.

Rainbow

le gasp Is that another timeskip I spy in this chapter? Who could have seen this coming! Anyways, cat's out of the bag now, and I'm sure there will be no negative consequences!

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