This is an alternate branch of the storyline continuing from [13A]

The Tall and Short Problems of a Cute Gamer Girl

[14A]
For the Primary Branch [14]

They walked over to the office with the paperwork the English teacher had given them. Giselle folded her arms and tried to find a position where her backpack wasn’t oppressively heavy. Olivia presented her paper to the woman at the front desk, who just pointed without speaking towards the security office to the left. This earned strange looks from Olivia as she glanced toward Giselle for an explanation. She didn’t have any.

In the security office, a big guy with a rough beard took their paperwork and then ordered them to sit in one of the plastic seats off to the side. If Giselle really only had 11 years to her name, then she would imagine that the situation would be quite stressful. Bordering on tears or worse.

Looking across the hallway at the vice principal’s office, Giselle narrowed her eyes as she watched the lumbering vice principal follow a couple of students exiting his office. She couldn’t hear all of his words, but her eyes widened in suspicion when she watched him smack one young girl across the backside as she nervously ambled out.

Instantly, rising fury amidst a cold memory surged through her thoughts. Complaints about administrative staff in this and other districts abusing their authority and intimidating young kids. In this area, folks just looked the other way so long as there were no marks and nothing illegal. Giselle felt stiflingly hot despite the old AC creaking above her.

She didn’t think much of it until Olivia bent in the seat next to her and whispered, “Your fingers.” Looking down at them, Olivia caught a plasma blue whisper arcing between the tips that quickly danced away. “What…”

“No talking!” The security guy snapped, looking up from his paperwork. Giselle let out a low rumble from her closed mouth. She was really getting tired of being treated roughly, especially for a little kid. After she was nearly cut off again when asking if they could work on their homework, the security guy didn’t say anything further. Quietly, Giselle laid out a piece of paper and started writing.

[I have your blue light on me.]

That seemed as good a place as any to start. Olivia gazed at the paper and scrunched up her forehead before slowly drawing her letters.

[I know.]

Giselle followed that up immediately by asking [What does it mean?]

Olivia reached over for Giselle‘s hands and gently palpated them around the fingers and the palms. She slowly shook her head and added to the text on the paper [I’m not sure.]

Giselle sighed and rested her head against the wall in a position that was nowhere near comfortable but got closer than trying to sit up. The vice principal had another group of students to meet before them. They both paid attention to his eye-line on the female student as she walked into his office. Giselle squeezed the edge of her chair. She imagined a dozen wild things she might do. They started with chucking her chair in his direction and most of them ended with her in a lot of trouble.

Giselle always thought well of teachers. Rachel spent several tortured years in an inner-city elementary school trying to teach students who clearly didn’t want to be there. Their main source of entertainment was cracking the mirrors so they could get shivs. Just getting them to show a passing interest in her class left her broken and crying every single night.

Rachel treasured the summer because they could record all sorts of gaming videos and she could work on educational content for her channel in her free time. Fortunately, the income from those videos along with supplementary options was more than she was earning from her day job. Health insurance was the one disparity, especially when things got bad before her surgery. Giselle fumed at how careful her wife had to be when teaching while absolute assholes at the top could be like this and everyone looked away.

She knew her hands were glowing again, and she didn’t care. Olivia laid an arm across her elbow and wrote [Permission?]

It took her a moment. With what was going on with her, she almost felt like she could easily blast the stuffing out of this jerk. But, at the same time, she really had no idea what was going on with her. Better to be safe.

She nodded quietly to Olivia‘s question. They waited until the girl ahead of them made her way out of the vice principal’s office. No disgusting contact this time, but he got really close to her. As she walked away, Olivia watched and slowly raised her hand. The vice principal went back into his office as a blast of luminous energy sparked from her fingertips and traveled across the hall. Quiet followed. Then a frantic, high-pitched scream.

Out of the office staggered a junior high girl tangled and swamped by a man’s suit several sizes too big for her. A wave of dark hair clung around her eyes and spilled down her back. Olivia made a quick motion like a breath but glanced over at Giselle‘s hands as well. The chaotic alarm and terror quieted for a moment as several people rushed into the hallway to see what was wrong. The emotional energy still crackled in the air, and it seemed especially palpable for Giselle.

One fortunate circumstance of the upheaval of the disconsolate new girl was that no one seemed to pay any heed to the two of them sitting off to the side. It didn’t take Giselle or Olivia long to realize the opportunity of this moment. They snuck with their heads crouched and made their way to a girl’s bathroom around the next corner.

In the safety of the unfortunately fragrant confines, Giselle splashed her face and asked aloud, “What about now? Any clue?”

She nodded and let some water pass over her fingers in another sink. “I have my suspicions, but I doubted my pen to express it. I believe you are host to my sister.”

Giselle rubbed her wet hands across her face and then used a paper towel to dry everything. “How? Is it from the kicking? I thought you said she was asleep… Hibernating?”

Olivia took careful paces across the room. “Yes, she was sleeping. Healing. After what happened. But… she must have been awakened by something. As though sensing an immense source of nourishment. Perhaps last night or today. I found myself heavily drained. That was unexpected. But in such a weakened state, she may have sought me out. And it is harder to sense the important things in such a humanoid shell.”

Giselle threw up her hands. “So, why do I have the glowing?” Olivia continued to pace. “When I drew upon you with surprise this morning, perhaps she went to you. Needing a place to continue her recovery. Like a child needing a womb.”

Immediately, Giselle turned noticeably green. “Pregnant? Oh God… she can’t stay…”

Olivia urged her, “It is not like a pregnancy. I also decline to compare her to a parasite. Although, you are her host.”

Giselle‘s arms wrapped around her abdomen as she pleaded, “How do I get her to leave?” Olivia shook her head and reached over to palpate parts of Giselle again. Her fingers roamed quickly and lightly until they settled on her head. “The only way she leaves is death or birth. Hers.”

Feeling dizzy, Giselle glanced upwards as Olivia felt around. She felt hot especially when Olivia’s fingers pressed a certain spot around the top of her head. Olivia added, “When Britney gave you those ears, that sense of change and surprise and emotion must’ve caused her to settle. I have an idea…”

Olivia dug into Giselle‘s bag and came up with the tiger-striped ears that she’d worn earlier. Casually, she asked, “Permission?” Giselle felt like she was way in over her head with this but gave a quick nod.

Following Olivia‘s instructions, she placed the ears in the usual spot she wore them and Olivia‘s fingers sparked once more. What followed next was immensely weird in ways that Giselle just didn’t have words for. Firstly, the weight melded together with her scalp. Secondly, the left ear twitched and shifted, as though alive. And, lastly, Giselle struggled with the sensation of having more sounds piped into her than just the stereo of her two ears. A crescendo of alarm, surprise, confusion, and a hint of curious delight flooded her before it was swept up like a custodian’s squeegee. A meal for the little girl inside her head.

”Just for two hours. I can remove the auditory function, if that is preferable.” It didn’t take more than a few moments of the four-way ringing in her head for Giselle to plaintively request that. The ears still moved and looked far better than the artificial copy. Giselle had to ask how they were going to explain that. Olivia shrugged and remarked, “Your friend thinks she can do magic. Maybe tell her that she did? That she enchanted your ears. Let her fill in the rest with her overactive imagination. Her exuberance and emotion will also be helpful.”

Giselle would’ve been perfectly fine with pressing her to remove all functions and just leave the ears stuck to the top of her head for the use of her sister. But she also understood on some level that leaving them like this would make her uncomfortable and likely more emotional about everything. Just part of her plan, but she would’ve appreciated being clued into it rather than having to assume.

They waited in the bathroom and Giselle used the nearest stall with some discomfort and full awareness about the wobbly seat beneath her. When she got out, Giselle folded her arms and her kitty ears bent pensively. She asked, “Are you keeping things from me?”

“Yes. As you keep things from me. It is a thoroughly human trait and one I am gradually learning. Humans deceive, humans wound, and humans care mostly for themselves. But you are not a bad human. Nor is Rachel. When I am the one to change, I hope I am a human more like you than the others out there.”

Giselle let her tension ease and slowly sighed. “I hope so. Am I going to be okay? By which, I mean, best outcome for your sister… My head isn’t going to explode, right? No Athena burst from Zeus? Dang, I can’t believe I remember that.”

Olivia cocked her head. “There will be no damage to you. We usually exist in a different way from you. When we change, we are released, as though just a warm breath of air into this world, escaping the cold darkness into the brightness of day. We are reborn elsewhere and we forget so much.“

Giselle leaned back. She was reminded of a beautiful game she played once where wanderers strolled past each other in the desert and other climates until they came to a mountain, against all adversity, and it was like… kinda like that she guessed. She was never really one for all this heady, existential craziness, but she had no ill will towards Olivia or her sister.

“Your sister didn’t have a name, right?”

Olivia nodded, the same as she didn’t have a name before all this. Giselle shrugged and proposed, “Not that I want to invoke the painful parts of the mythology, but why don’t we call her Athena? That could even help her on her way, perhaps.” Olivia appeared doubtful on this last note but had no objection to the name, she even turned it around a few times before nodding and saying, “It’s pretty. I hope she likes it.”

The only reaction was a continuing patch of warmth along Giselle‘s head. At least she wasn’t as dizzy as before, but she still felt uneasy and uncertain, both emotions she did her best not to suppress because she hoped they might be a sufficient drip feed for the… kid.

They lingered in the restroom unbothered for long enough that the bell finally signaled the end of the period and the beginning of lunch.

[Since this is meant to be interactive, feel free to suggest ideas and prompts for future/alternate branch storylines. Some branches are already written but this will allow me to best pick new/alternate ones. I'm currently just rolling dice.]

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