This is an alternate branch of the storyline continuing from [8A]
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The Tall and Short Problems of a Cute Gamer Girl

[9A]
For the Primary Branch [9]

“Want you?” Giselle vaguely wondered if she had been hit in the head too somewhere in all this, if she was seeing the toilet seat in the form of a human child.

The white-haired girl steadied her eyes and responded, “You hurt my twin. She had to go back into her shell. If you don’t want me, just say and I’ll go quiet too.”

Giselle frowned, brushed her long blonde hair out of her eyes, and shook her head. “I don’t understand. What are you and what is all this?”

Touching her ivory hair in vague mimicry, the girl responded, “I want to be human one day. But I’m still young. And I need to eat.”

Setting her hands at her sides, Giselle scrutinized the weird child and pressed, “Eat? You eat people?” She wasn’t sure whether to run away and lock the door, but she looked over her shoulder to see whether it was still open. It was. She had no idea what everyone else was doing. Despite getting bashed, she feared that the threatening guy would return while Britney and Rachel were vulnerable and waiting for the police.

The girl gently mirrored her again before answering, “We feed on change. Humans are the only big animals that can change so much in one individual. You create big waves in everything. We catch your wake. And make you make waves. I can change you and that creates more change which I can filter to get stronger, to get more like you someday.”

All that made very little sense to Giselle‘s events-rattled brain. She loved space, so her immediate thought went to aliens, despite all the crazy memes involved. Why toilet seats as alien eggs/babies? Her 33-year-old brain often felt like it had only so much capacity for picking apart crazy video game plots, the anime ones especially. Heck, even a decade ago, it felt like most things flew a mile over Jeremy‘s head. But, making sense of this deeply mattered to the ones she loved and possibly her entire reality. So, she concentrated.

“You… And things like you want to be human. So, you turn men into women? And older people into young ones?” She worried that one of her blinding ocular migraines might pop up. This was the age when Jeremy first got them the worst. It took decades before all that settled down into different sorts of aches and pains.

The girl scrunched up her face in imitation. “Change. Surprise, fear, uncertainty, hope, curiosity, excitement, imagination, and possibility. And more. Twenty-four-hour doses. Punishments. My twin is sorry she took so much of that from you, but you hurt her, and she needed to sleep to get better.”

Giselle didn’t find a whole lot of that which made sense. But some familiar landmarks were starting to connect for her. “The toilet seat punishes a man who lifts it without putting it back down by making him a woman for twenty-four hours. That’s because… You need a dose of human chaos to feed?”

At that, the girl clapped her hands. “You understand. Partly. Not chaos, just change. Emotion. Your feelings for her. The one you share your life force with.” Her… Rachel. But some parts Giselle still found confusing.

“If you need change as part of your… Life cycle… then why do people forget? Why is it like no change happened?”

After tipping her head back, as though searching the ceiling and walls for some answer that only she could see, the girl soon responded, “Wounds. Scabs. Change returning to what it was. It adapts. It goes back but different. Food dries up. They stop us.”

As much as Giselle was morbidly fascinated by all this, she was terrified of what was going on outside the doorway. Britney and Rachel felt like no match for that creepy guy. But she had to ask, “They?”

“Those who call us parasites. The ones like you, who are not you. Those who slip through the walls while we sleep. They take us and vanish…”

There wasn’t a single part of what she just said which didn’t give her shivers or make her feel a little sick to her stomach. Giselle had to leave and make sure the others were okay. She motioned towards the doorway, but the girl grabbed her hand and refused to let go.

“Scared. Don’t leave us. Your warmth is better than the forever cold.” Like so much in all this, Giselle had no idea what to say to that, but she let the strange child hold onto her as she walked slowly out of the bathroom and back over to the master bedroom. As she feared, the creepy guy was nowhere to be seen. Not even under the bed.

“Gone. Back through the walls.“ No way she was ever going to shake her unnerved shivers when the kid kept saying stuff like that. Fortunately, Britney and Rachel were over in the kitchen, Rachel standing in easy reach of every knife they had and Britney standing beside a wooden baseball bat. The relief was overwhelming.

Britney looked like she practically flew across the room while still keeping her feet on the ground. The ferocious hug that collided with her didn’t barrel her over because she only spun half a turn holding onto the weird girl. A little dizzy, Giselle then got enveloped by Rachel rushing to her side too. Eventually, the white-haired girl got in on the hug as well. The grumbly, grandpa portion of Giselle‘s soul bristled at being overwhelmed on all sides like that.

“Who’s your friend, Gi?” Britney waved at the new girl and gave a half smile. It was as Giselle feared: there were even more cute nicknames floating around for her than ‘Elle’. She could’ve shot it down but, at this point, she wasn’t sure if it was from another bend in reality or something more benign.

Besides, she had bigger things to worry about, along with more heartbreaking things. Rachel cradled her head and squeezed her shoulders like a mom relieved to be reunited with her daughter. A wound in things, scabbed over with what made the most sense.

Non-related tween girl who lives with an adult woman, must be her adopted daughter. Giselle could think of several things that worked better than that correction to reality. Such as… Such as… Well, she couldn’t think of specific examples, but she definitely knew there were several that would’ve been better. Probably…

It didn’t take too long for a police cruiser to drive by, with a squeal from the siren to announce their arrival. At this point, there wasn’t much they could really do. The black van had vanished and neither Rachel nor Britney recalled hearing it pull out.

They took down a description of this “Cerberus“ and his vehicle but none of them could recall the plate number, not even Rachel. As for the girl with long white hair, the officers crouched down and asked her her name. She looked to Giselle for help, as though she could do something about this. Figuring that telling them that this was some sort of embodiment of an alien egg that lived in their toilet seat wouldn’t go over well, so she went with what sounded like the most generic name possible off the top of her head.

“Olivia Smith. She’s my classmate.” Of course, the officers took all that down and wanted to know more. Where did she live, where was her family, and what teachers could they contact? “Olivia“ behaved as though each question sapped energy from her. The officers gave her space. The one nearest kept adding to his notes as Giselle watched.

When his back was turned, Olivia popped up and a blue glint flashed through her eyes. Immediately, the officer tumbled to the pavement and cried out. That wasn’t all that happened, as the big burly male police officer with a comb mustache shifted into a blonde woman with a long, braided ponytail reaching around to her chest. She was still clothed, despite scrambling in an oversized pool of her uniform. The other officer, who had gone around to the front of their squad car, hustled over and stared dumbstruck at the unfamiliar woman wearing his partner’s uniform. Olivia squinted lightly. Her eyes were a pale blue that matched the energy when she appeared and the flash she just summoned.

The newly-female officer was much smaller than the man she used to be, with narrow arms and slight contours. Her partner didn’t believe her claims and harshly admonished her for reasons he didn’t even seem to believe. The bewildered officer got a blanket and a seat in the back of the squad car. The other officer rubbed his eyes, sighed, and informed them that the department would be following up shortly.

Olivia crawled into Giselle‘s arms and got very sleepy. Britney offered to help but Giselle guided Olivia up the stairs by herself and into her bedroom/workspace/tween geek room. Curling up in the covers, Olivia quickly went silent without even breathing. Although Giselle wasn’t entirely sure she had been breathing before. Nervous, Giselle prodded her until her eyes inched open again and stared.

Olivia explained in a low voice, “Needed food. Storing it. Didn’t want to take from the ones you call Britney and Rachel. That man will revert in six hours. Quarter dose. Just enough. Need rest...” It was still unnerving for Giselle to watch Olivia freeze in place more like a corpse than a sleeping child. She could just sleep with Rachel again this evening, but it would be different.

Before she left her, Giselle folded her hands in front of her and said, “I’m sorry I hurt your twin, that I kicked her and she had to go into… Hibernation?”

Olivia didn’t immediately say anything, so Giselle sighed and started to walk away.

“She…would question why you are sorry, when she has taken such potential from you. Years of who Jeremy was and who Giselle could be. She would beg for your forgiveness, that she was too afraid of the forever dark.”

“I forgive her.“

Olivia didn’t respond, but Giselle sensed that she heard her.

After pulling in a deep breath, Giselle nodded slowly. She had the feeling that she should’ve just let Olivia sleep or whatever she was doing, but so many piles of questions remained. They could wait, they had to wait. Most of them. She had just one question left though.

“Why do you…and your kind want to be human?”

“…. Love. Human love. It can reshape entire worlds. With it, we can truly live, change, and grow for ourselves.”

Giselle‘s mouth shifted like she was chewing. Some jaded part of her, at least 33 years old, wanted to roll its metaphorical eyes but the rest… Remembered the way that Rachel always greeted her at the airport after just a few days away on a trip or to visit her family for a special occasion in the Midwest. She would race forward like a child, despite the weight of all her bags. Her arms would be spread wide and, even though she couldn’t come close to fully squeezing towering Jeremy, she would envelop him as much as possible. At times like that, she felt like the biggest thing in the world, and he felt so small beside her.

There was no way for Giselle to hold back her tears as she just managed to wish Olivia a good night and snatch up a handful of tissues from the nearest Kleenex box. She lingered in the junk restroom until she didn’t look like a little kid who just spent the last few minutes sobbing.