Tyler looked down at her class schedule again, double-checking that she had the right order of classes today. Being gone for a few days in the first week of school made her feel like an alien among the other students, who all already knew where they were going. She was just about to get excited about a new story idea about an alien high school romance story when a voice interrupted her.

“Are you sure you’re okay? You were kinda upset on the bus.” Orlando asked.

“I’m fine, Orlando. I got it out of my system. And uh, thanks by the way.”

“For what?”

“For everything. Just, thanks” she could feel the phantom emotions spring up, so she said a quick goodbye to Orlando and hurried off to her first class of the day, Eris following behind.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Eris echoed Orlando’s question.

“I’ll be fine, Eris. I just need time to process everything. I just learned that Orlando likes me, but that doesn’t matter anymore.” She could feel a tear in the corner of her eye, so she quickly changed the subject. “A-Anyway, my mom got you permission to follow me in classes for a while, and the first class is math with Ms. Cat. You’re going to like her I think.”

“Ms. Cat?” Eris asked.

“Oh, right. Her name is Ms. Carlyle, but everyone calls her ‘Ms. Cat’ cuz of her glasses.”

“Right. And if I can guess correctly, math is the one with the weird numbers and symbols?”

“You know, sometimes I forget you’re actually from the past.” Tyler giggled. “Shouldn’t you know that from my memories? Yeah, math is the one with the weird symbols and letters. It’s a fancy way of counting things.”

“I only gleamed the necessary stuff when we first connected, like language and current events, and I preferred not to dig further without your permission. Fancy counting was not all that necessary compared to being able to talk to you.”

“Oh. Thank you, I suppose. But don’t you have a magic spell to learn stuff?”

“Not really?” Eris answered and tilted her head a bit. “Magic is good at reading intent but not so good at reading context. There might be a way to magically learn things, but you’re more likely to get the wrong things or even wrong answers to things. It’s much easier to just magically enhance your learning when you’re able to learn from a teacher.”

“Wait, you can do that?” Tyler asked. “Actually, never mind. We’re here.” Tyler said as she pulled open the double doors to the math class. She hurried over to the back of the room and pulled up one of the spare folding chairs that were kept near the back of the class. The room doubled as the art room, so there were many supplies and extra things lying around in the back of the class for the art students. They still had a minute or two until the bell rang and everyone was still filing into the classroom, so Tyler decided she’d introduce Eris to Ms. Carlyle.

“Ms. Carlyle. I’d like you to meet Eris. She’ll be joining us for a bit in class. She doesn’t go here yet, but we got permission to let her follow me to my classes.”

“That’s fine, dear.” Ms. Carlyle said while she was looking down at some paperwork on her desk. Tyler figured it was homework that she missed out on, and she didn’t like the idea of being so far behind on schoolwork. When Ms. Carlyle looked up from her desk, she had a confused look on her face. “I’m sorry, are you one of my students?”

Tyler blushed as she realized she forgot the most important part, to introduce herself first. Eris stifled a laugh behind her, which made her more nervous. “I-I’m sorry, Ms. Cat, I mean Ms. Carlyle.” Tyler stuttered. “I’m Tyler.”

Ms. Carlyle’s eyes widened a bit by that, and then her face went kindly as she remembered something. “Oh yes, I heard about that from Matthew. I’m happy you’re comfortable enough to finally come out, dear. Though I must say, you look amazing.” She said honestly, but with a hint of disbelief. Tyler felt a little nervous as she realized it’d be hard for her to pass off her changes as something that could happen over a few days of being out of school.

“T-t-thank you, Ms. Carlyle” Tyler stammered and quickly scurried off to her desk.

Eris stayed behind though and watched her leave. She turned to the teacher and made a short bow as she said, “Thank you for letting me stay in class, ma’am.”

“Of course.” Ms. Carlyle smiled.

◊◊◊

Tyler was nervous and jumpy all class. She had gotten more than a few weird looks from the other students as she sat down at her desk. She tried to ignore the rest of the class by focusing on the lectures, and found that raising her hand and participating in class was a lot easier suddenly. When the bell rang to change classes, she bounced out of her seat and grabbed Eris’ hand to hurry out of the door before anyone could ask her any uncomfortable questions.

She let go of her friend’s hand and asked, “Hey, Eris. Did you cast any spells on me lately?” She had been wondering if she did the spell they talked about before class.

“No, why?” Eris asked, confused. And before she could clarify, someone ran up behind them.

“Excuse me!” Came a small voice behind them. Tyler and Eris turned to the voice to see Brandyn. She was a short girl who had mousy brown hair that she let hang down to her shoulders and wore plain clothing most days. Tyler knew her vaguely from the classes she had with her from the past year, but she never really interacted with them enough to get to know anyone. She also sat next to Tyler the whole class and kept glancing over at her.

“Y-yes?” Tyler asked.

“Uhm. I wanted to ask. Are you really that, Tyler? The teacher kept calling you that all period.”

Tyler quickly went through an entire pros and cons list in her head and came up wanting to introduce herself as someone different. Someone new, someone who could start fresh and didn’t have a history. But she squashed that idea when she remembered how that went with Durian and how awkward it was going to be today if she ran into him and just decided to tell the truth.

“I am. I hope that’s okay?” She said meekly.

Brandyn’s eyes lit up a bit and said, “That’s so cool! I have a gay cousin, and she didn’t come out until she moved away to college. I’m Brandyn, by the way.”

“Um. Nice to meet you, Brandyn. This is Eris, she’s a friend of mine who’s trying to join the school.”

“I haven’t decided that.” Eris objected loudly.

“You’ll come around.” Tyler teased and found herself smiling.

“Did I hear that right?” A loud voice spoke up next to Tyler. She hadn’t heard them come up to her, and the baritone voice startled her a bit. She turned and saw another member of her class who she couldn’t remember the name of. “You’re Tyler? Like, Tyler, Tyler?”

“No way, man. Just look at her. She doesn’t look anything like that other kid.” Came an equally loud voice from next to him. Tyler found herself starting to panic as a few more students turned to see what the commotion was about.

“Umm” Tyler said, trying to think of what to say when another voice spoke up.

“That other kid? You mean that’s Tyler? I figured she just had the same name.”

“C’mon man, she looks a lot like Tyler. Look, she’s got a similar face and eyes.”

“I guess. She just looks different enough.”

“Enough! You’re scaring her!” Eris shouted from behind her. She grabbed Tyler’s hand, and they hurried off down the hall.

◊◊◊

The next class was thankfully quiet as no one overheard her introduction to the teacher, who handed her a few pages of homework she needed to catch up on, and nobody questioned why she was sitting in her seat. Feeling a bit happy she managed to stealth into class this time, she spent all class holding back on raising her hand to not draw attention to herself, and just focused on calming down her nerves. Unfortunately, that meant she didn’t pay that much attention to class.

Tyler was still in that dazed state when she walked through the halls as Eris quietly followed her to her next class, which thankfully was a study hall. She could just focus on getting caught up on her homework for the next forty-five minutes. She was deciding between English and Math when a large figure blocked her path and froze in a panic when she realized it was Sid.

“Excuse me.” He said, not paying attention. She sighed a huge relief when he didn’t recognize her and kept walking. She watched him go down the hall, and it looked like he was sulking a bit. Tyler shrugged off her nerves and continued walking.

“Who was that? I’ve never felt such a major panic from you over our connection. And coming from you, that’s hard to believe.” Eris half asked, half teased.

Tyler grimaced, “He’s a bully. A really bad one. He picked on me a lot over the years, but recently, it’s gotten much worse.”

“Worse?” Eris asked, all teasing gone, replaced entirely by worry.

“Yeah. He’s actually the one who finished the ritual that got you out of the cup. He managed it by throwing me against a pane of glass.”

Eris’ eyes widened a bit, and then she had the most intense look of anger Tyler had ever seen. “He’s the one that put you in that state when we first met?”

Tyler nodded, and then gulped as she watched her friend's anger grow a bit more. She could practically feel the fury coming off her as her tiny body shook a bit. Tyler placed a hand on each of her shoulders, and tried to calm her friend down before she did something drastic.

“Hey, Eris, it’s okay. If it wasn’t for him, we’d never have met, right? Sid’s trouble, but he’s trouble that’s manageable now.” Tyler wondered at how she was able to say those words without trembling. Did she no longer fear Sid? Something had changed, but she wasn’t sure what. Maybe being friends with a powerful god-like being had given her a bit of a confidence boost.

Eris steadied her breathing and closed her eyes as she calmed down a bit.

“Get to class, you two. You’re going to be late.” Came a voice behind them. They turned around to find Ms. Knightly, and for a minute Tyler worried if she had overheard anything.

“Yes ma’am!” She called out and decided to put off her worries.

◊◊◊

“I don’t believe you.” Kyle said as he took a huge bite out of his ham and cheese sandwich. Kyle tended to be the kind of person who got the same thing every day, but to be fair, the sandwiches here were quite good.

“I know what you mean. I’m still not entirely convinced.” Orlando said, which gave Tyler a slurry of emotions she couldn’t pin down.

“Guys, it’s really me. Honest. What do I have to do to prove it?” Tyler asked. She had been trying to not mind all the glances people gave her around the lunchroom, but her friend’s disbelief and loud way of talking was making it difficult to ignore. She was painfully aware of several people who were clearly trying to listen in.

“Bullshit, you’re really Tyler.” The sophomore replied between bites of his sandwich.

Tyler felt a squeeze on her hand, and she looked up at Eris, who was holding her hand underneath the table. She drew a bit of strength from her friend and turned back to her two friends. “Okay, let’s do it this way. Ask me something only the original Tyler would know.”

“Really?” Orlando smirked. “Even I know that’s a trope, it’s so overused.”

“Hey! It’s a good trope for a reason!” Tyler defended, “Besides, if you really want to make sure it’s me, how else are you going to do it?”

“Okay…” Kyle thought for a moment. “How did we first meet?”

“That’s easy! You and I sat together on a bus ride to a field trip out to the mountains. I was sad cuz I got assigned to a different bus because there wasn’t enough space in the one for my grade. You asked me what I was writing, and I told you about an idea I had for a story.”

“Hmm, that’s pretty good, but you could have gotten that info from Orlando.” Kyle mused. “What were you writing about?”

“Really, Kyle? Alright, it was a story about a prince who was locked away in a tower by their evil stepmother. All they could do every day was just talked to their pet mouse and plot their escape, which came one day when a beautiful knight in shining armor came and rescued him. They escaped the tower but ran into trouble with the army and the knight had apparently defected. They hadn’t been spotted yet, so the main character knocked out the knight and dressed up in her clothes and armor and pretended to be her to save her from her fate. The rest of the story is a romantic prison break where the ex-knight tries to gather a bunch of people to help her out.”

Kyle stared at her dumbfounded, mouth very slightly open. He swallowed the piece of sandwich and said, “Yup. You’re Tyler alright. No one else could come up with a story like that.”

“Hey! What do you mean by that?”

“Dude. C’mon. You’ve been daydreaming about knights and princesses and aliens and sci-fi stuff since I’ve known you. Though now that I think about it, a lot of your stories featured the main character switching genders.”

Tyler felt a powerful blush come to her face.

Orlando nodded his head. He hadn’t touched much of his lunch yet. “Now that you mention it, her main characters almost always has to dress up as a girl or gets changed into one.”

“It’s cuz… I—” Tyler tried to say something to come back at that but couldn’t think of anything. They were right, of course; she’d been writing stories like that for as long as she could remember.

“Don’t worry about it.” Orlando patted her head. “I believe it’s you. Honest.”

Tyler was unable to say anything, her brain had completely short-circuited at the friendly touch on her head.

◊◊◊

“Marisa? I’m excited to hear from you so soon. I hope you have something to report.” Her boss sounded tired, and she was happy she could get some news to him so fast.

“Yes sir. I’ve been checking on the students. I’ve been focused on the primary suspect since they’re back at school today. It was difficult to find them at first because she showed up looking very different.”

“She? I thought you said in your report that the primary suspect was male?”

“If she ever was, she’s definitely not now.” She replied. “I only found her because she caused a major ruckus in the halls. She’s got a new friend too, and the testing tools I have went mad when I tried to use them. Either one or both of them has had close contact with powerful magic in the past seventy-two hours.”

“I thought you said there was only a mild trace when you checked out their house?”

“The tools we have do work at a distance, but they become increasingly inaccurate the further you are from the subject, and even more so if you don’t have a good line of sight. I believe that’s what caused the low readings that night. I’d have made her a higher priority if she had set off the tools like this before. She’s almost certainly the reason the artifact we recovered is completely void of magic.”

“I see…” The phone was quiet for a few moments. “Then I want you to focus only on observation for now. We’ve never had an artifact lose its power before, and the fact that this person showed up changed almost all but confirms she’s the one behind it. Make sure she’s not a threat, and if she is, follow extraction protocols. And be careful, Marisa. We don’t know what we’re up against. Especially if she’s taken the power of the artifact for herself.”

“Understood, sir.” She replied and locked her phone when she heard the line go dead.