A Little Vice (Trans Magical Girl fic)

[Shadell]

Spoiler: Content Warning

These apply to the work as a whole: depression, dysphoria, internalized transphobia, transphobia, abusive family, abusive counselors, suicidal Ideation.

The monster towered over a host of innocent high school students, an eight-foot tall humanoid assemblage of television and radio parts with arcs of blue-white electricity cascading across its ramshackle form. The only complete device in its body was a large radio that sat where a head would have been.

"Listen!" it called with a susurrus of voices drawn from a hundred failed disk jockeys. "Listen to me!"

The radio monster advanced slowly and clumsily through the station lobby, each ponderous step driving the increasingly panicked students further into a corner. Electricity arced out from one hand and crashed into a wall, showering the students with debris. A boy fell to his knees.

There wasn't much point to running, and everyone knew it. If you took away the furniture, the lobby was just a large box with a single door from which the monster had come in the first place. No one had any route to escape; at most a student might have avoided the monster for a few more moments as it tore through their friends instead. A few students started to cry.

Naturally, that's when an arrow made of fire crashed into the back of its head.

"HOLD EVILDOER!" a crystal clear voice sounded from the far side of the room. The monster stumbled into the crowd, grabbing an unlucky student and then spun around, holding him—me—up as a shield between it and its attacker.

The teenage girl who'd spoken lowered her bow and spun in place, finishing in a familiar pose with one hand holding the bow at her hip and the other pointing a flaming arrow at the monster.

She was dressed in something that looked almost like a school uniform, though I had yet to see a school uniform that exposed anyone's midriff, or that came complete with a pair of tiny fluffy angel wings and a brilliant halo forged out of solid red light.

Her skirt and her ponytail fluttered in the heat of her own magic, the red of the skirt a perfect match for the red of the hair. Both also neatly matched the scattering of freckles that stood out against her pale skin. She held the pose as she said her customary introduction, "Cleansing evil with the flames of purity, Angelic Saint Castitas has arrived!"

Castitas probably would have kept attacking if it wasn't for me. Ever since the Saints had acquired their magical weapons, Castitas tended to favor shooting absurd numbers of arrows into anything that moved. Instead, she froze for a moment. The radio monster used its free arm to send a blast of electricity toward the girl.

Castitas tensed, but even I could see she'd be too late to get out of the way. Her hesitation had cost her.

Of course, Castitas rarely fought alone. The floor rose up to diffuse the attack, before crumbling under the monster's power to reveal a dark skinned blonde, her shield positioned to guard the Saint of Purity.

Aside from the fact that the new girl's yellow costume was very similar to Castitas' red, the two were as different as could be. Where Castitas exuded a fiery charisma, the second Saint had a sturdiness and stoicism to her that lent her a knightly mein. She was also, to Castitas' frequent consternation, a great deal taller.

"Steadfast as the earth," I found myself muttering, oddly distant from yet another near death experience.

"Steadfast as the earth! Persevering forward one step at a time, Angelic Saint Diligentia is here!" she shouted.

Which left…

A pressurized jet of water struck the mechanical monstrosity in the arm that wasn't holding me, sending it reeling. Taking advantage of its distraction, Castitas leapt over her teammate and bounced off Diligentia's waiting shield to soar toward the radio creature. Landing just in front of it, she plucked me from its distracted arms and carried me as if I were a princess.

The monster swung one clumsy hand at her head. Without pausing to recover or setting me down, Castitas dropped into a crouch. The displaced air from its attack left me with little doubt as to how dead I would be if we had been hit. But Castitas showed not a hint of concern as she bounced up in the monster's wake and jumped once more. Her feet struck the arm that had just swung past us, pushing it further off-balance and sending both me and Castitas careening through the air away from the electrified beast.

Diligentia dashed toward the melee as Castitas soared over her head and landed the pair of us safely out of immediate danger.

Temporarily free from the fight, Castitas glanced me over to make sure the mere mortal in her arms had made it out relatively unscathed. Even as she gave me a small comforting smile, I heard a soft and cold voice call out behind us, "Calm as still water. Biding until I strike like a tsunami, Angelic Saint Temperantia..."

Castitas carried me through the room's lone doors as her teammates kept this week's monster busy. Gently, she set me down in a deliberately cozy hallway whose walls were covered with posters advertising musicians of all stripes. For a lingering moment she looked at me, fighting the urge to say something, before she settled for a weak smile.

"I have to get back to the fight C… Charlie, but you should be safe out here."

I'm not sure how I managed to keep a straight face. Yes, quickly correcting to my name after accidentally slipping into a nickname that barely anyone used was a decent save. However, I had never, in the dozen odd times that Castitas had ended up saving me from a monster, given her my name.

Sure I'd thought of telling my best friend—who'd just just saved my life again—that she was really bad at this whole secret identity thing; but it felt like it would be rude to pry when she clearly didn't want to tell me. And the only times when I might have had the courage, when she'd just saved me yet again and I burned to tell my hero that I knew what was up, always ended up being the times I couldn't speak.

I might have said something right there, in that floating distant high of another near death experience. But for some reason I couldn't find the air to speak. On closer examination, my heart was doing its best hummingbird imitation and I was panting desperately. I managed to force out a barely audible thanks as Castitas slammed the doors open to dramatically reenter the fray.

I waited a few moments, then sagged into the wall and fell to the floor as my legs gave way under me.

Freed of the all too familiar dance of hostage and rescue, I had little to do but realize how scared and frustrated I actually was. I hated how powerless this always made me feel. My best friend was out there risking her life, being a hero and doing something bigger and better than anything I'd ever manage in life and all I could do was huddle into a ball and try to avoid losing my mind. "Pathetic," I muttered to myself.

At least I didn't cry. Boys aren't supposed to do that.

----

I got sent to the nurse's office when the teachers finally corralled us back to school; everyone else got to return to class. The first few times a monster had interrupted a school field trip, class, and/or assembly last fall, they'd given us all at least a day off. By the fifth time, and the looming realization that none of us would be getting through half of the required curriculum if this kept happening, they'd simply decided to soldier through.

Except for me apparently. For whatever reason our routine monster attacks honed in on me like Inessa—Castitas—honed in on Lupin, the senior class' token goth girl. Of course, while Inessa tended to just sigh longingly at her crush from a distance, the monsters were a lot less shy about things. The end result was that I'd assembled a pretty impressive history of being manhandled, getting thrown at things, turned into an object, held hostage; charmed and, naturally, of being rescued by magical girls. Honestly, you'd think I would be used to it. I hadn't been surprised when Shocker grabbed me. Hell, I'd made no real effort to not be one of the closest students to the monster. And yet, I'd still panicked like an idiot and ended up trembling in a hallway.

And, well, requirements or not, they couldn't just let you get used as a human shield by a monster materialized from a failed shock jock's desperate greed for rating success and send you back to class. That would be inhumane. And, obviously, they couldn't cancel field trips,major club activities or holiday celebrations even though these were basically guaranteed to prompt magical terrorism.

And so, my December report card had absolutely looked like the victim of a monster attack, and, even though we were already in mid-January, I could sense that this term would be just as bad if I didn't work as hard as I could to stay afloat. And sure it was the last part of senior year and colleges wouldn't really be making any acceptance decisions on these grades. But if I wanted any chance at a scholarship I had to work as hard as possible on my classes.

Instead, I found myself bored out of my mind in the nurse's office. It had been nice, the first few times, to have a quiet place to gather myself. But this was no longer a simple matter of getting attacked once or twice and nothing really bad had actually happened to me. I didn't need to be coddled like this. Inessa and company had been the ones actually fighting for their lives and they didn't need to skip class afterwards.

No, they'd been able to fight instead of freezing up like a little…. person who is not particularly manly. Which, like, sure, that was toxic masculinity or whatever; internalized despite my best efforts at avoiding dad's bullshit. But like, what was the point of even being a guy if I couldn't even stand up when a man was 'supposed' to?

The school bell interrupted my wallowing before I could really get into it and I practically sprinted to the nurse to ask his permission to head home. Begrudgingly, as if he wanted me to lie around being useless for even longer, the nurse let me go after extracting a few concessions like "taking it easy" and "setting up an appointment with the school's guidance counselor."

That left only one more obstacle before I could escape to the quiet solitude of home.

"C!" the redheaded bane of my existence crashed into me outside the nurses office, wrapping me into a tight hug, "I heard you got attacked again," Inessa said, as if she hadn't literally princess-carried me out of danger.

"Just the usual, no big deal," I tried to play it off.

Inessa Brandt, without the magical uniform and its accompanying heels, was a petite and thoroughly upbeat girl, whose breezy disposition, freckles, and cute looks had made her quite popular in the last few years.

She let go, and took a step back. A flicker of something sad worked its way through her face and ended with a pout in my direction. "It is a big deal C, you could have gotten hurt."

"Well," I parried, "Castitas was there to save the day, so it all ended fine." Honestly, it burned a little that Inessa had gone and become someone so amazing while I was still the same boring C. I couldn't resist teasing her. "I just wish there was a way to thank her to her face for saving me so much and tell her how amazing she is."

Inessa blushed, "W-well, I'm sure she knows she's appreciated and really she's probably just sorry that you keep getting involved."

"Yeah," I trailed off, guiltily.

"What's wrong? You can tell me."

I thought, for a moment, of telling her that I knew exactly who'd saved me; that I was so grateful and also so jealous of how radiant she'd become, while here I was unable to take a step forward or make anything of my life. I would never get to be a beautiful strong girl like Inessa, standing in center stage and challenging the forces of evil.

"I just wish…" I said instead, unwilling to admit how bitter my heart felt to someone who'd immediately decide it was her responsibility to help me.

"Yeah?"

"I just wish that I wasn't so powerless. That I could, you know, do something to fight back if I'm always going to get pulled into these things," I laughed awkwardly. Inessa didn't deserve my issues, not with everything she was doing. "But I guess I'd look pretty awful in a Saint's uniform."

"C…" she hesitated, not sure what to say.

"I dunno," a quiet, emotionless voice cut in, "You're pretty leggy, I think you could probably pull the look off."

A tiny pale blue-haired girl stood a bit away from Inessa, looking somewhere between apathetic and awkward. After transferring to school in late November, she had almost instantly become Inessa's close friend, despite almost everyone else finding her off-putting. It made perfect sense to me. Obviously the blue haired girl named Temperance Atwater was actually the Angelic Saint of Temperance.

And yet… Somehow no one but me seemed to have realized that the blue haired girl named Temperance might be connected to the magical girl named Temperantia. Temperantia had first appeared on the day before Temperance had transferred to our school and they shared distinctive blue hair. In my mind, this was a strong point of evidence that everyone else in this town was an idiot. Alternatively, everyone else in this town had long guessed Inessa, Ida's and Temperance's identities and was simply being circumspect out of gratitude.

"Ha ha," I laughed awkwardly, more angry at myself for making the joke in the first place than Temperance for hammering it home, "as if."

"I think it would at least be a much better aesthetic than oversized hoodie," she nodded sagely, her voice betraying not a hint of emotion.

"Just drop it okay, and I'm not even wearing a hoodie!" I didn't hate her, for all her endless needling, but I did not understand Temperance Atwater at all.

"Spiritually," she corrected without a single indication that she was joking. Temperance drifted into companionable silence and I took that as a momentary victory from her near constant teasing.

"A-anyway," Inessa said, shooting Temperance a glare, "are you coming over for dinner tonight? You haven't been by since the end of winter break and my folks are a bit worried."

I hesitated. I didn't want to inflict my issues on Inessa, who was already doing so much for me. I also didn't want her family to worry, and if dad ended up coming home earlier and he saw me in this kind of mood, the evening would be unpleasant. It struck me that it might be in my own interest to stay out for as long as possible.

"Y-yeah, thanks, I'd like that."

Inessa sagged as she let go of a tension I hadn't realized she was holding. Then broke out into a big smile, "Great!"

Temperance, for some reason, offered her a high five.

Despite my mood and how much I hated relying on others, Inessa's parents were as sunny and happy as always. They showed me a kindness I didn't deserve and made all the right little gestures about how they'd missed me these past few days and how much they wanted me to know that I would always be welcome. It would simply have been mean to act all gloomy around them and bring everyone down just because I was feeling particularly self-loathing.

I'd anticipated a night of brooding. But between the fact that it was hard to fake being upbeat around genuinely kind people for long without becoming a little bit happier yourself, and that I'd beat dad home despite the late hour, I felt remarkably good. It was still unpleasant to dwell on the day's events, but I didn't feel compelled to obsess over them for once. Instead, I spent the night alternating studying with reading silly little stories online and wishing that kind of thing could actually happen to me. It was enough to almost let me feel like I could handle things by the time I went to bed.

I dreamt equally ridiculous little dreams of a world where Temperance's jokes weren't just jokes and I got to be one of the heroes, fighting side by side with my friends. They were silly and impossible and I woke with an unusual spring in my step and a smile on my face.

---

My good mood lasted most of the—thankfully monster free—school day, up until shortly before my last period appointment with the school's guidance counselor.

I was missing too much school as it was. But no, instead of enjoying Friday afternoon AP Macroeconomics, I had to be sitting on a couch in Mr. Noir's small office. The bespeckled man carefully lit an incense stick then took a seat across from me. He was tall, in a kind of reedy way that made it seem like there was more suit than man there, with sickly gray skin and a smile that didn't quite reach his sunken eyes.

"So," he pinched out the match, "what can I do for you today Charleton."

I hated him instantly.

"Everyone just calls me Charlie," I tried not to let my irritation show. I had an objectively terrible name and the less I heard it the better.

"Ah," he shook his head, "You know there's a great power in names. Charleton, that's a good name. Rare, a bit old-fashioned, serious. Too few appreciate that kind of thing," his voice was shrill and crackly, like the static between radio channels.

I bit my lip and tried to let it go. It wasn't his fault that I'd been on edge for weeks, or that I desperately didn't want to be here, and taking it out on the innocent guidance counselor wouldn't be fair, no matter how weird he was being.

"Everyone says it sounds like Charlatan, so I go by Charlie," well, people might have said that if I had social interactions with anyone my own age that wasn't Inessa or her friends.

He nodded sadly, "A shame, well, children. I suppose it can't be helped. So Charlie," he hesitated on the name, as if he found it distasteful. "What brings you here today? Or just wanted an excuse to skip out of sixth period?"

I shook my head vehemently, "the nurse made me. I've missed too much class as it is. I have to study extra just to stay on top of things with the way everything's been going."

He nodded sadly and jotted something down, "Terrible, and why is that? Trouble at home?"

I shook my head, "My dad's fine," that was more or less true. Neither of us respected the other much at this point and I couldn't remember the last time we had had a pleasant conversation, but he wasn't a monster or anything. He kept a roof over our heads and food in the pantry. "I've just ended up getting wrapped up in a lot of these monster attacks."

Mr. Noir paused at that for a moment, staring at me deeply, as if really looking at me for the first time, before breaking into a wide grin. He didn't say anything else until just before I reached the point where I could no longer endure his silent judgment.

"Fascinating." he cut me off just before I said something dumb, "Getting wrapped up in all of that business, I mean. And how does that make you feel?"

I hesitated, "Well, it's not like I can really control it, right? And, barely anyone really gets hurt, what with the Angelic Saints saving us all the time and all."

Mr Noir adjusted his glasses, "Yes, yes, but surely you must be angry? Always getting pulled into their fights, forced to take part in business that disrupts your life? It must be upsetting?"

The incense smelled of cinnamon and something coppery that I couldn't place. It gave the whole room an odd, dreamlike quality. None of that made Mr. Noir the least bit less creepy. If anything, a part of me wondered if he was about to turn into a couch themed monster and try to devour me.

"No? If anything, I feel bad? Here are these amazing heroes who have to spend so much time saving me and I don't even really deserve it."

He watched silently, considering.

"And they're powerful and beautiful and amazing and here I am and I can't even keep away from a monster for longer than three days at a time."

He perked up at that, "Ah! I see. beautiful, yes, that makes sense. Luxuria then, after all this searching."

"What?" Okay, he was definitely giving me monster vibes now. Latin tended to do that lately and I was starting to get a sense for when these things were afoot. I took a deep breath, nearly coughing on the overpowering scent of incense.

"Oh, nothing, nothing. Some things have become clear. Well, I must say you shouldn't put yourself down. You seem like a young man of great potential, Charleton."

"It's Charlie," I muttered, drowning in cinnamon.

"Well Charleton, let me ask you a few more questions. I wouldn't want to take too much of your time today young man, and this has been quite a valuable conversation already."

"What?" I asked more sharply than I usually let myself speak. The heady mix of the scent and how off Mr. Noir was left me with the bizarre floating sensation of being in a bad dream from which I couldn't wake up.

"A problem I frequently see with 'well-behaved' boys your age," he said paternalistically, "is that they don't want to admit their own needs. Oh, they try to be 'good,' and the world rewards them for being nice little diligent drones."

"And that's bad?" I asked, worriedly.

"Oh yes," his smile showed his teeth, "hiding your darker emotions helps no one in the end. You can run from adolescent desire as long as you want, run until you can't even remember what you're running from if you want. But the primal need will catch you and it will be all the more empowered for your attempts to confine it. Boys should be boys."

I hesitated. I wanted to ignore him, to say that was nonsense. And yet, on top of everything that had happened in the past few months, beyond mom and the monsters and dad, he wasn't wrong. There was a hollowness in me I couldn't quite name.

"I can see it in your eyes. You know I'm right. You know that your desires are there, boiling beneath the surface and that nothing will make them go away beyond embracing them."

Was he right? Was the ache deep in my soul whenever I thought about Castitas and the others desire? It wasn't as obviously wrong as I wanted it to be, but I had no clue what it was he thought I desired. Power maybe? Agency, the ability to help? Nothing felt wrong, but nothing felt like they grasped the entire picture either.

"For now, it's enough to understand that suppressing all this need won't help you. Try to think on it, to feel it. If we want to overcome your problems, you'll need to be able to vocalize what it is you crave."

I nodded. For all he was disturbing, there was something to this advice that felt right. Now, if only he could give me any tips on how to name what it was I needed so deeply and so primally.

"That will do for today," Mr. Noir said.

Then he removed his glasses. He gently folded the arms in and placied them on the table with slow meticulous movements. Only then did he raise his eyes to stare into mine.

"I'll leave you with few things to think on for our next session," he said.

I tried to look away. But I couldn't. His eyes were wrong. There was something there so much worse than any of the monsters I had seen. His eyes were wrong. I wanted to bolt, to run, to do anything. Instead, I nodded and sank back into the couch. His eyes were wrong and the air was cloyingly sweet….

---

I yawned loudly and cracked my neck as I made my way from Mr. Noir's office. It took a few moments to clear the overpowering scent of that incense from my nose, and I barely noticed a girl approaching.

"Hiya, how's it going? Charlie, right?"

"Yeah, Charlie," I coughed pitifully a few times as I looked my interlocutor over.

Lupin Noir was our small school's resident goth, and the focus of Inessa's silent adoration for all of senior year. Between the faux-leather jacket, the spiked collar around her neck, the neon purple highlights in her raven-black hair and the faint hint of an unplaceable accent, Lupin had no shortage of aesthetic. Allegedly, she was also the school's resident rumormonger, and a girl who always got what she wanted.

"What brings you this way?" I asked. I hadn't heard the school bell, engrossed as I was in my talk with Mr. Noir, but my phone told me school had let out half an hour ago.

"When uncle dearest decides to spend the afternoon with a student, well, I can't leave until my ride's ready to go, so…" she shrugged.

"Mr. Noir's your uncle?" they were both pale to the point of being gaunt, but beyond that I could hardly see the family resemblance.

She nodded mournfully, "Yeah, I've been living with him since I came abroad to study. He's a bit of a square, but he's not that bad once you learn to speak his language. He treat you okay? It smells like he's been going hard on that incense of his."

I laughed at that. "Well, he was a little weird at first, but we had a pleasant man to man chat in the end and I think he really helped me clarify my thinking on some things and it was nice to talk to someone who's, you know, older and wiser? Get things off my chest for once." I stopped there for a moment, then continued. "I just feel like I can trust him."

She looked at me oddly for a few moments. "Well, I'm glad you got along I guess. But Charlie, what deep dark secrets do you need to unburden yourself from? Got a crush? Is it Inessa, inquiring minds would pay good money for this info!"

I winced, "No, that's just gross. Inessa's like a sister to me and besides," if I told Lupin that Inessa was probably the single gayest girl in school everyone would know by tomorrow, "I really don't think I'd be her type," I offered as a diplomatic alternative.

She nodded eagerly and, "I see, I see, so you're not together. Is she dating anyone then?"

Somehow, it felt almost like she was taking notes.

"That's not really any of your business is it?" That remained true, no matter how much Inessa wished otherwise, "Sorry I can't give you anything bankable."

She shook her head, "Nah, my uncle can sometimes be a lot and I've been waiting out here for ages. Wanted to make sure that you weren't too overwhelmed or anything, especially since it sounds like you've gotten involved in, what, two monster attacks this week." The last was said with a coy innocence that made me wonder just what Lupin's angle was.

I shook my head. Honestly, he'd been a little weird at first, but it had become obvious he was a guy I could trust as the conversation had gone on. Besides, I really wished people would stop babying me just because I kept getting in the way of these things, "It's fine. Honestly, we even made an appointment to talk more next Monday."

She looked almost worried, "he wanted to see you again?"

"Is that so weird?"

"Nope, just that he's usually got most of what he needs from a student after a single meeting. I guess that means you must be a real head case," she laughed, but her tone was only gently teasing.

I gave her a mock glare, "Well, it seems like he spends a lot of time with you, being your uncle and all. If I'm a head case, what does that make you?"

"So, you've seen through me then," she grinned in a way that showed all of her pearly white teeth and took a few predatory steps toward me. I backed away, suddenly a bit nervous. It wouldn't be the first time a student had randomly tried to attack me before suddenly turning into a money themed monster, "I'm a greedy greedy girl of course! Practically terminal."

I laughed awkwardly, and she took a step back.

"Seriously though Charlie. I just wanted to check in? I'm sorry about how you seem to keep getting caught up in the middle of all of this stuff going on. It's really not fair to you."

I shrugged, "The Saints seem to get caught up in a lot more than me, and besides, it's not like it's your fault I seem to be natural monster bait."

"Right, obviously it's absolutely not my fault at all!"

With that strangely guilty rejoinder, Lupin practically dashed into her uncle's office.

I couldn't help but muse how little the two resembled each other. They were both unnaturally pale, of course, and there was a hint of shared accent in both their voices. But Mr. Noir was off-putting and a bit staid, while Lupin was just such a strange girl. Well, they both were nicer than I'd been led to expect.

Maybe Inessa's taste in girls wasn't so disastrous after all.



NEXT WEEK ON SHINING VIRTUE ANGELIC HEART!!!

After an argument with Michael, Inessa and her friends go to visit the local gardens to take a break from all the fighting. Michael follows in secret, however she ends up separated from the group just as a new resinner transforms the gardens into a deadly hedge maze. Can our heroines find their trusty advisor in time to stop Avaritia Wolf's newest monster!?

Tune in for Episode 13: Michael Lost? The Labyrinth in the Botanical Gardens!

Spoiler: AN

I'd like to give a huge thanks to @NemoMarx and @Squishy and @Chehrazad for their extensive feedback on earlier drafts of the work as well as their encouragement. I'd also like to thank Tomoyo on the SV discord for C&Cing this first chapter and @Pawn Lelouch for reviewing the first few.

So, this started as a Nano project, of which roughly 50k words have been written. At the moment, chapters 1-4 are in final editing while the rest need some structural edits and pacing fics. This has been inspired by a few things, especially Curse You, Magical Girls! A Flower Blooms in the Heart of a Villain!? an excellent short magical girl transfic by Rooibos Chai. But Pretty Cure and Sailor Moon have both been an influence on this as well.

I'll be posting this to my Scribblehub Profile about a chapter or two behind the SV releases. If you like this silly little novel of mine, it would be a huge help if you favorited or left a review over there!

While this work will touch on a few dark issues, it's ultimately meant to be on the fluffier side of things.

Chapters 2 and 3 should be out soon!

 

[Shadell]

The weekend was exhausting. But it was less unpleasant than I worried it was going to be when Inessa called and told me we absolutely had to take a classmate's offer to visit the botanical gardens' special winter hedge maze together. Inessa was insistent that I (as well as Temperance and Ida) join her on the trip to "relax and be kids for a while." She used this reasoning a lot; it generally ended in monsters.

But, even if I knew what was coming, what kind of animal would reject his best friend when she seemed so desperate to blow off steam that had probably built up from saving the day over and over again for months? Deep down I mostly just felt glad to be included.

I was mildly surprised that Ida, the tall, dark and athletic superstar of the volleyball, basketball and lacrosse teams, joined happily. If I was busy juggling the county level basketball tournament with the start of lacrosse practice, I would not have had the energy to spend a day out with people. This would have been triply true if I was also a superhero juggling a class-load almost as bad as mine. But I wasn't a magical girl literally named after her diligence. Ida would not have struggled to lift my small burdens.

For my part, I did my best to smile and offer whatever vague support I could muster when an increasingly anxious Inessa started wondering loudly about what hypothetical people should do if they'd said something mean to a trusted companion. And I managed to find a justification to make everyone split up when the whole group got trapped in the maze that "Winter Rose" created.

Inessa had clearly been panicking about finding a place to transform in secret. Even if I couldn't really do anything to help the Saints, I could at least give them that much cover and act oblivious once they'd returned, flushed from victory.

"Honestly," Ida muttered as we made our way out of the garden, "boys!"

I tried to hide in my winter coat, suddenly extremely cognizant of how out of place I was among an otherwise all-girl friend group.

"Not you, C you're, like, the exception! You would never even think of quintuple timing those poor girls like that," Inessa clarified, looking equally steamed despite the cold January air. "Well, at least I was able to make up with Micha…"

Temperance swatted at Inessa's shoulder and gave her a pointed look. Far, far too late, Inessa clamped a hand over her mouth to avoid mentioning anything more about "Michael." I had no idea who or what they were; but Inessa accidentally mentioned them enough that I was sure they were connected to the whole magical girl thing.

"Umm," I fought the urge to try and figure out what story they were avoiding this time, "I wouldn't…"

"See, C is just bad at being a boy, not even trying to two time anyone," Temperance attempted to distract me with more of her usual harassment. "I stand by the assertion he'd be better as one of the girls," she nodded expertly. "Just get in the skirt C."

"Hey, don't be mean to her… to him like that!" Inessa said, blushing brightly at the Freudian slip.

"Nah, can't see it," was Ida's equally thoughtful contribution. For some reason, the fact that one of them wasn't playing along with the bit made the whole matter that much more irritating.

"Thanks, all of you," I offered sardonically, "Seriously though, if you want to hang out with just the girls," and presumably vent about the monster attack that had predictably interrupted their attempted break from all the monster attacks, "I can head home. I wouldn't want to intrude."

Ida was the fastest to respond, "You're good C; and really, you're a friend. You're welcome here. Besides, I think Inessa would set us on fire if we actually chased you out."

Inessa blushed, "I invited you here because I want you here. C, you've been my best friend forever. You're like the brother I never had and I don't want to let anything come in the way of our friendship. With everything it's just been so hard to find time to spend together lately."

"And I can't force you to try on a skirt if we let you escape," Temperance said intemperately.

"Thanks, both of you. That really means a lot," I blushed. Obviously I didn't really fit in with the group. I'd lucked into befriending Inessa as a kid and now her friends had to tolerate me because of that. Besides, between mom and the monsters, things had officially been bad enough for me over the past few months that giving me the boot would probably make them feel bad. But it felt nice to hear anyway, and it'd be rude to point that out when they were already sacrificing their precious free time post-monster to assuage me.

Inessa pulled all of us into a group hug, "It's like you said earlier, if you don't say things when they're bothering you, you'll end up fighting and hurting each other no matter how much you want to avoid it."

I vaguely remembered saying something like that, but it sounded a lot more thoughtful and put together in Inessa's lips.

"I'm just glad we can all be so open with each other," Inessa added with only a touch of guilt.

---

Dad was home early that afternoon. But I was lucky and he was too moody and self-consumed to pay any attention to me. He was also probably drunk, but that wasn't any of my business. Either way I didn't have to lie or deal with the warring blame and guilt that fought across his face whenever he looked at me. It hadn't always been this bad; but, recent events had left us both a lot worse at hiding our worst selves.

Of course, he also stayed home all Sunday and had plenty of time to tell me exactly what he thought of me being such a disappointing waste of space who'd never be a real man. I managed to resist inflicting myself on Inessa's family that evening. Boys shouldn't cry and—even if letting someone see me in that state had been on the table—I didn't need to add managing my inability to deal to Innessa's long list of troubles. Besides, I was oddly eager to talk to Mr. Noir again on Monday. I trusted him and I could tell him about almost anything after all.

Instead, I locked myself in my room to do homework and sedate myself with the kind of online stories that can eat your attention and help you shut off your own thoughts for a little bit. I dreamt once more of a world where I could actually fit in with the group and help them instead of constantly being in the way.

---

"Your problem," Mr. Noir said with a cloying condescension, "is that you try to restrain yourself too much. You're a growing boy, it's only right to have desires, to want things."

My Monday morning session with Mr. Noir was not going well. Life had taught me that you had to control your desires, to be a good person. You had to restrain yourself from wanting things you weren't allowed to want, or at least to stop that from becoming anyone's problem if you couldn't want the right things in the first place.

"Boys have needs! When you're young, you need to indulge! Turn your back on the world of light that demands you restrain yourself to match everyone else's level, to be merely normal. These magical girls are beautiful and charming. It's perfectly normal to want them; healthy even."

There was something seductive in his tone, in the way his eyes seemed to bore holes right through me as we sat in a fog of incense. He reminded me a bit of my dad. At least, he would if I took away the penetrating gaze, the care and consideration and the fact that Mr. Noir seemed to almost respect me.

"I guess," it didn't really seem like he could be wrong. Mr. Noir wasn't ever wrong, was he? I could trust him.

"Now," he continued, "tell me more about these dreams of yours."

I hesitated, as much because of the overwhelming urge to meet his demands as in spite of it. To disappoint him was unthinkable.

"I dream of fighting together with them, the Angelic Saints, as a member. I'm not a victim. I can give something back to them for everything they've done for me and do something that matters."

Mr. Noir shook his head and I winced. I couldn't tell him everything. What weird boy dreams about being a magical girl? My recalcitrance must have disappointed him.

"To give back? To do something that matters? No, no one really cares about such pretensions. Admit it, you want to win their respect, but not for some silly altruistic notion. You want them to be yours, to fawn over you and praise you, to serve at your beck and call."

His words filled the room in an almost tangible sense. It was impossible not to take them seriously. Was that what was going on? All that strange nameless longing I felt was some kind of distorted attraction to my only friends filtered through whatever inferiority complex being so useless had given me? I couldn't admit I wanted them, so I imagined being one of them instead?

Mr. Noir watched in silence as I thought, smiling so widely that—if he weren't so trustworthy—I might have called it megalomaniacal. It was nice of him to give me the space to come to my own answers.

But, what were they? I'd definitely noticed that Inessa and her friends—many of the girls in class—had grown up to be beautiful. And, definitely, when they transformed, they could shine so brightly it hurt to think about them. And I definitely felt something in response to that beauty, an ache I wouldn't dare form into words.

I wanted to challenge him. To find the line of argument to rebut what he was saying and tell him what I really felt. I looked into his eyes and the weak objections died on my lips.

"Maybe…" I admitted slowly. Maybe I was just a useless pervert after all. Even Ida had said that's how boys were. I'd heard it from my dad over and over again, how men were supposed to act toward women. Maybe all of this was just running from myself. I was a boy. That sucked, but I knew deep down that was all I was and all I'd be.

And because I was a boy I could interrupt, dominate a conversation, stare, harass or do any number of things that made all my friends uncomfortable and probably get a free pass from the world for doing it. I probably made use of these things in ways I didn't even notice. Probably, deep down, a part of me wanted to revel in that advantage. And it was easy to see how I could run from wanting that. Everyone wants to imagine themselves as a good person.

"Yes, that makes sense," I said with a sense of defeat, "All of us men are just beasts."

Mr. Noir nodded patronizingly, "good, you're getting closer to facing yourself. One or two more sessions and we should be able to make something great of you indeed."

---

I avoided Inessa throughout the rest of the day. I couldn't see her without realizing how cute she was when she smiled, and felt even worse for all the more it made that horrible nameless feeling stronger in me. Was that why I kept dreaming about being a magical girl? Because I knew Inessa would never want to be with a boy and it was the only way my subconscious could envision getting close enough to do whatever unimaginably weird or gross things that I probably wanted to do to her deep down. Imagining what I might really want made me nauseous.

Unfortunately, rule one of dealing with Inessa is absolutely that if someone runs away, she will chase them. At first it was easy to avoid her. She'd try to talk to me in the halls and I'd make a quick greeting then retreat. But by third period, she absolutely knew something was up and I had to shift from pretending things were normal to actively hiding.

And, even more unfortunately, I was so focused on dodging Inessa that I never noticed a Temperance as she snuck up behind me at lunch.

"How are you today C?" she asked, flat as ever.

"Not great, please no more jokes about shoving me in a skirt right now."

She pouted, "But you seem to enjoy them."

"I, what? Look, guys don't like it when you challenge their masculinity. It's," I hesitated. I'd never been macho, and time with Inessa's family had helped me avoid internalizing most of dad's bullshit, but I knew how the world worked, "It's demeaning when you say that I'm not a real guy. People don't like that!"

She tilted her head to the side, betraying rare signs of some faint emotion, albeit one I couldn't parse, "Is that so? You keep blushing and smiling whenever you hear those jokes."

Did I? That didn't make any sense. I glared at her, "I don't like it! Look, that's because they're embarrassing! Okay! I get that you don't really do emotions, but that's why I react like that!" I hated myself a little for lashing out at Temperance. It wasn't even like I really minded as much as I should. But I knew what I was. And I probably wasn't even one of the good ones, not really.

She winced, and somehow, I felt like I'd gotten through to her.

"Sorry," she managed, unusually pensive, "I'll drop it if it hurts you. But, I wanted to talk to you about something without Inessa or Ida around. Do you have a moment?"

I desperately wanted to avoid her entire friend circle for the day, but I'd basically never seen Temperance emote. On the other hand, I was inches away from screaming at someone. I hated that my friends did so much more for me than I could ever repay. They'd literally saved my life multiple times within the past week. And here I was unable to even sit through a simple conversation in return. I owed Temperance far more than that.

But I couldn't manage it, "I'm not feeling great. Could we talk some other time?"

I tried to tell myself that if Temperance wanted a serious talk, she deserved me actually focusing and not obsessing over my conversation with Mr. Noir. But thinking of that conversation only made me notice how slender she was, with a cold beauty as if she was carved from ice.

Temperance nodded, "it would be best if you're in good condition when we talk," she said, then turned to leave. "I'll keep Inessa off your trail," she offered emotionlessly.

I couldn't help but stare after her. Temperance was definitely cute in her own odd way. A stupid impulse made me wonder if she wanted to ask me out. It was a silly thought; that would never happen to someone like me.

Still it was less deeply uncomfortable to imagine dating Temperance than Inessa. I allowed myself to imagine us. I would grab the tip of her chin and lift it up even as I bent over and brushed the hair out of her face. Tentatively our lips might brush against each others'. Honestly I had to fight the impulse to start giggling like a maniac then and there. The thought wasn't bad or gross to imagine. The image was just so deeply awkward and implausible that I couldn't find anything tempting about it.

And even if Temperance was to start dating me in some alternate dimension, it wouldn't go anything like that. For one, she'd probably take things up a notch and actually bully me into a skirt for anything even resembling a date. That felt alarmingly plausible. Temperance would sit me down and threaten me until I let her do my makeup and put me in a sundress. She'd tease me of course, and I wouldn't know at all how much of her praise was mockery (not that it could really be anything else). Then she would drag me out in public like that, to watch a movie or get dinner, leaning in to whisper quietly how right she was and how she'd made me almost as cute as her…

I buried my head in my hands. Mr. Noir was right and there was no way I could ever talk to Temperance again.

----

Senior year was not going well. I'd picked a demanding course schedule, with 5 advanced placement classes, under the hopes it'd look good to college admissions departments and help me escape my family. I would have struggled to stay ahead in the best of situations. Then mom had just left on the third day of the new school year. She hadn't come back. I'd handled it badly; but it broke dad. He just gave up on avoiding all the mean little feelings he'd always tried to hide around me.

It wasn't the worst. He was nasty, and he said nasty things, but he didn't hit me or anything. He wasn't abusive. Still, I'd already been in a bad spot before I factored in the constant monster attacks.

I'd barely scraped by with a 2.8 GPA on my report card in Fall and, while I didn't think colleges would look at my spring grades before deciding on admissions, my hopes for a merit scholarship depended on them.

We were only on our third week back at school and I'd already gone through four monster attacks; I'd missed most of my classes on three of those days, to say nothing of the bruises or the restlessness they provoked.

And now, instead of studying I spent Monday evening obsessing over Mr. Noir's words and the strange thoughts they'd made me face. I drifted off to sleep confused and worried, and woke much the same. I only knew one thing: Mr. Noir could help me; I could trust him.

Dad was up early that morning, which made breakfast a quiet affair full of unspoken barbs and veiled glares. I wondered what dad would think of Mr. Noir's assessment of me. He'd probably have told Mr. Noir that whatever my perversions, I'd never be manly enough to act on them. I was more kitten than lion, and undeserving of the energy.

Granted, Dad also had somehow convinced himself that I was going to end up dating Inessa someday soon, so maybe he'd think Mr. Noir's advice about acting out whatever I was feeling was just what I needed to be "a real man."

I had to shove down a fit of nausea at that thought. With a last glance and a mumbled goodbye at Dad, I abandoned the rest of my breakfast, grabbed my backpack and made my way to the door.

Inessa Brandt, who I'd managed to avoid for nearly a full day, was naturally waiting for me outside. She looked sleepy but determined and I knew instantly there would be no escape.

"Morning C," she said, with a tension that told me avoiding her had not gone unnoticed.

I did my best to smile comfortingly at her. Judging by her expression, it didn't work.

"Morning Inessa," I offered weakly.

"How are you?" she asked in a tone that said very clearly that she knew I was avoiding her and was now demanding my explanation.

I didn't know what to say. Could I tell her I was struggling with emotions I barely understood and didn't want? That the past 3 months had been one disaster after another and that I'd only managed to mess things up more in every instance? Should I have told her that I'd turned around and my only friend had started to shine so brightly it hurt to look at her sometimes. Was I supposed to tell her that—while I honestly had nothing but respect and admiration for her—it still hurt a lot to know she'd gone and made herself amazing while I languished in the mud.

"I'm fine," I said with an air of nondescript finality.

She put her hands on her hips and glared. "Oh come on, don't be such a boy! You can and should talk about your feelings!"

I winced, something about being judged as a component of my gender always stuck me the wrong way. But I wasn't going to try to tell anyone that "not all boys."

"It's okay to talk about what's wrong," she continued in a more conciliatory tone. "Everyone knows you're struggling with things lately. We're here for you C."

I bit my lip to avoid responding with my first impulse and marched past her wordlessly, starting the journey to school.

"It's not just me. Everyone wants to help: Ida, Temperance, my family. We all care about you a lot. But if you don't tell us what's wrong, we can't fix anything for you."

"I don't need anyone to fix me," I snapped at her, with a degree of confidence in that statement I did not feel.

Inessa winced, "that's not what I meant C; you know that."

"I don't need pity," I said, hating myself for saying it. Inessa had been nothing but nice to me. I was the one who'd worried her, who'd leaned on her while she was busy fighting for the fate of our world. I was the one unable to do literally anything for myself.

"I don't pity you C. Just, talk to us. We're not trying to fix you, we just want to help!"

"Right, because Mom left and Dad's himself and the monsters won't stop bullying me. Poor C," why was I shouting at her? Inessa, of all people, deserved none of this. "But the truth is? That's not even really why I'm so miserable."

I wasn't sure of that. There is no easy way to separate strange nameless longings from other things. How are you to tell apart feeling sorry for yourself because your future is going down the drain from feeling sorry for yourself because you're constantly assaulted by monsters themed after innocuous household objects from feeling sorry for yourself because you weren't good enough to stop half the people in your life from abandoning you? I lacked a sophisticated palette that could differentiate such miseries.

Inessa clenched a hand around the strap of her backpack, her knuckles turning white from the strain. "Why then?"

"You and the gang all know who you are and what you want. You're reaching for things, growing every day, standing up for people. You've all become so amazing. And I'm just a dumb useless boy who can't do anything for himself, who doesn't have parents who care enough to help him figure out college if he can't get a scholarship he doesn't have the grades for."

I took a deep breath. My throat stung and I was half certain dad could hear us from inside. I would face consequences for that later, but that wasn't enough to stop me.

"But even if I did it's not like I have any idea where I want to go or what I want to do in the first place. So much is going wrong and it seems like the only thing I can do is to sit on the sidelines and wait to see what monster attacks me next and whether the Saints have finally gotten sick enough of it that they don't go risk themselves to rescue me. I'm powerless, and even if you offered me the world, I wouldn't even know what to ask for."

As pathetic as I felt, there were no tears. I'd learned that lesson well enough.

"So no, unless you know a way that someone useless like me could actually become, I dunno, a magical girl, then I don't think there's anything you can do for me Inessa."

Was the howling need buried deep in my chest really lust? I didn't know. Either way, Inessa didn't deserve this.

For her part, my best friend since childhood looked confused, then she smiled at me, and I found that some little part of me didn't think being upset at her was the worst of my many terrible decisions after all.

"I'm really not sure the Saints are girls only," she offered, stumbling a little of her words, "I'm sure they'd take boys, if the right one came along."

"That's not," that did nothing to fill the emptiness, "that's not the point Inessa."

I wondered what the right boy would look like. Obviously he wouldn't actually be anything like me, whatever Inessa's implied offer.

"Sorry," she sniffled.

"No, I'm sorry, I'm being awful to you," I sighed, "you don't deserve any of this. You're right, things aren't great, it makes everything," was I going to try to justify myself? Make excuses for my bad behavior instead of just owning what I was doing?

"C, I literally just asked you to vent," Inessa said, shaking her head like I was a lost cause. Then she laughed and tried to hug me. I wanted to recoil, but she'd done nothing to deserve that, so I smiled weakly and pretended like I was in on the joke.

"It's fine C, I come to you with my problems all the time," she added, reassuringly.

That wasn't true. Sure Inessa and I had argued a few times, and she was usually the one who lost her temper, but I almost always deserved it. And sure, Inessa frequently came to me for advice, but we talked about things like sane mature people that were practically adults. She didn't just start screaming attempts to bury me with her inadequacies. And even if she had, she would still be the one secretly fighting for her life against a horde of monsters.

"I'm working through some things," I did my best to smile, "I'm talking to the school guidance counselor. He's been really helpful in reframing things for me. So much has happened, I just… need some time to figure myself out." There, that was true more or less, and it definitely sounded like the kind of thing that might make people actually worry less. Of course, Inessa wouldn't give up until she could find a way to help; it was best to give her a bone with this kind of thing. "When I know how you can help, I'll ask. If you're not mad at me for just now."

Inessa pulled me into a tight hug. "You're basically family C, of course you're not going to get rid of me that easily! Now, don't you feel better for letting it all out?"

I didn't.

----

It did, however, give me the excuse of being tired and needing to think about things to avoid everyone for the rest of the day. Mr. Noir hadn't scheduled our next appointment, but I was buzzed over the PA to visit his office in the middle of third period. That should have been a pain. Calculus BC was the hardest by far of all the courses I was struggling to stay afloat in. But, while my sessions with Mr. Noir had only made me more aware of how awful I actually was, they'd given me a glimpse into just what was wrong with me. That had to be a step toward getting better. Besides, I could trust him. It only made sense to do what he asked of me.

I packed up my textbook and made my way to him, struggling to pretend the odd looks from the other dozen students in the class did not exist and no one had noticed me getting called to the school shrink right in the middle of class. Really I just had to imagine that no one could perceive me. Yes, easiest and best to just imagine a comforting world where no one knew I existed at all as I made my way to Mr. Noir's.

A now familliar olfactory wall of cinnamon and copper greeted me as I slipped inside his office.

"Charleton, good, take a seat," his voice was strained, but Mr. Noir seemed happy to see me at least. I wondered how he could breathe sitting in this incense all day.

Nonetheless, I did as instructed, keeping my gaze on the table between us.

"Now, now," his voice seemed faintly mocking, almost bemused. "Look me in the eyes Charleton. It's only polite."

Reluctantly, I lifted my gaze to stare at his completely ordinary eyes.

"Much better. See, you can do that much if you try."

"Thanks," I muttered sarcastically.

"None of that now," something dangerous lurked under his tone, an undercurrent of authority looking to lash out at the slightest disobedience. I'd heard that tone enough from dad that I understood the meaning.

"Sorry," I offered more sincerely.

"So Charleton," he continued, emphasizing my name in a way that cut, "have you been thinking over our last meeting."

I nodded, "I don't know," I admitted. "I'm not happy with the way things are, and it's not like I don't have things I want. But, well," I wasn't sure how to finish that thought. My daydream about Temperance swam through my head.

"Your problem Charleton," Mr. Noir cleared his throat, "is that society demands we domesticate ourselves. People used to be able to live with their emotions, to let their inner beasts run free. Boys could be boys before civilization caged them up."

He stared at me seriously, "No beast survives a zoo Charleton. Take the mightiest alpha wolf, the deadliest tiger, and confine it to a cage for lesser beings to come and gawk and it will die as surely as if you tore out its heart."

"What do you mean?" I vaguely recalled that alpha wolves were a myth, but Mr. Noir seemed sure of himself and I had to trust him.

"I mean, your problem is that society is strangling you with its expectations. Be polite, respectable, meek and virtuous. These are the means by which lesser men trap their betters and strangle the life out of them, Charleton."

I wasn't sure. There was something appealing about seeing society as a cage. It would be nice to declare evil all the pressure to think about my future, to know where I wanted to go and to make sure it fit inside that nice little mold everyone seemed to think a good man should fit told me a man should fit and declare those things the enemy. It would be freeing to abandon them as the enemy. But, would anything be left of me if I did?

"And then what?" I asked despite myself.

"Indulge yourself. Howl at the moon and run rampant. Reject this safe little zoo we call civilization and return to the forest where the wild things are. Face yourself as a true beast and satisfy all of your desires!"

I giggled despite myself at the, no doubt, accidental reference to a children's book. Stormclouds drove the impassioned smile from Mr. Noir's face.

"S-sorry," I managed, worried I'd offended the odd man. "It just sounded like Where the Wild Things Are and my mom used to…"

"It seems you will still need more work," Mr. Noir's voice was arctic. "Now, Charleton, look into my eyes."



NEXT WEEK ON SHINING VIRTUE ANGELIC HEART!!!

The gang goes to cheer on Ida during the first match of an important basketball tournament. However, when Temperance discovers Avaritia plotting to make a Resinner, Ida could be forced to choose between showing up for her team and showing up for her team. What will the Saint of diligence do when her responsibilities pull her in different directions?

Tune in for Episode 14: Go for the Gold, Attack During Ida's Match!

Spoiler: AN

And here's chapter 2 where we get to dig a bit deeper into C's issues and anxieties. Hopefully things start looking up for our poor egg soon enough?

As noted, Chapter 3 should be out probably sometime next week as both that and 4 just need a few final rounds of edits to go.

 

[Shadell]

My family moved to the Brandt's street when I was nine years old. Even then I was quiet and weird and I'd barely had any friends before the move. The new school only made that worse. Inessa went as well, was in the same grade and lived only a few blocks away. She was also a lot less popular among our peers back then. A pair of outcasts, we bonded out of desperation as much as anything else.

Our relationship was built on a symbiotic foundation from the start. I stood up to the bullies for Inessa in a way that made my mom worried and my dad cheer (I tried at least). Inessa shared her family with me. I gave her companionship in her many hobbies and fandoms and I got to copy her love of magical girl anime like Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura and Princess Knight Orion in return. Both of us were a bit depressed and aimless and we took solace in sharing that, even if Inessa learned to fake a smile as she got older and the bullies went away.

And then, while I was busy with my own issues, Inessa's smile stopped being fake. She just turned around and figured herself out. She came out, suddenly and proudly, and made everyone accept her for herself. She made new friends and started dragging me out to meet Ida and then Temperance as well.

And of course, though it took me a few weeks to realize it was her, she had literally turned into the very figure we'd both admired so much as kids. I respected her, both as Castitas and as Inessa.

But, on another level, I kept expecting her to drift away over time. I couldn't really contribute anything to the friendship anymore. She had secrets she had to keep now. And, okay, she was really bad at keeping them. But either way, that put a wall between us.

It just seemed inevitable that she'd move on to bigger and better things than me. It was only proof of how good a person Inessa was that she'd stayed with an aimless waste of space like me for as long as she had.

At least Mr. Noir was helping me get my head on straight. I spent time in his office after classes let out on Wednesday (the first half-day of the new term) and during second period AP English Lit on Thursday. I had yet to grasp his whole "embrace your inner beast" philosophy to his satisfaction. But I knew I would soon. Mr. Noir was always right; I could trust him. This would help.

But understanding the repressed desires that Mr. Noir said were secretly causing all of my problems proved impossible. No matter how much he suggested it was a crush, or a desire for a girlfriend or something more embarrassing, I couldn't quite make the feelings line up in my own head. Sure, the idea of a relationship seemed nice, but it was also just not that important. Even if I became someone else, I couldn't really imagine being the kind of guy anyone would have a reason to date. And imagining a relationship didn't make the void go away.

On Friday the 26th, however, class was cut short before Mr. Noir could call me. The school piled into the gymnasium for a pep rally in anticipation of the first match of our school's regional girls' basketball tournament. This was annoying, as Mr. Noir had promised me definitively that he'd 'force me to break out of my cage' in our next session and now I would have to wait until Monday.

I probably would have avoided the game itself; but the match was important to Ida and she was a friend, so that meant it had to be important to me. And that meant we had to go and I had to spend time with my friends despite the fact that I was deathly afraid I'd blurt out something of what I'd been discussing with Mr. Noir and ruin things with everyone forever. It's easier and safer to be unseen and unheard when you feel like you might say something you shouldn't.

I was dreading needing to pass two hours on uncomfortable gymnasium seating in close proximity to Inessa and Temperance. I remembered their comments at the botanical gardens. How would they react if they knew that every time they were near I couldn't stop obsessing over them. They'd be disgusted to see what a boy I really was deep down.

My sessions with Mr. Noir—as much as they would definitely help eventually—had only made that faint need flare into an agonizing want every time I saw Inessa being brave, straightforwardly expressing herself, or even just existing as herself with our friends.

As much I wished I could take Mr. Noir's advice and just embrace my id, letting Inessa, Temperance and Ida know exactly how constantly aware I was of how beautiful they all were, was a step too far. I needed desperately to retain my exception status to boydom.

But, the more I tried not to say anything, the more I thought about saying it instead. And that, in turn, made me focus even more on not letting anything slip. And on and on.

So of course, I sat next to them on a green plastic seat, cheering on Ida and almost pretending to focus on the game while my thoughts accelerated into a horrifically self-destructive spiral of conflicting impulses.

And really, even if I gave into Temperance's teasing and let her do whatever she wanted to dress me up, there's no way either of them would ever be interested in dating someone like me. And okay, a part of that was that Inessa was both gay and practically family. But I was also me and they were them and the gap between us was pretty big. It was only a quirk of fate that they tolerated me in the first place.

Fortunately, if there was one thing that attending social events with my friends had taught me, it was that they were absolutely going to have some kind of crisis in the middle. I would either enjoy the welcome respite of being victim 0 for another monster attack or they would get pulled away and vanish abruptly for half the night.

Sure enough, Ida exchanged panicked whispers with Inessa during half-time and both Inessa and Temperance promptly declared they needed to go to the bathroom. I waited five minutes, saw no sign of them, and let out a quiet sigh of relief; I was worried of course. I knew how scary the monsters could be. And even I could see that Ida was wracked with anxiety during the third quarter and barely able to play at all. But a petty part of me was still happy I didn't have to spend time being seen by my friends.

And okay, maybe I was a little panicked when the fourth quarter started and Ida didn't show up; but of course all was well in the end. She returned (exhausted but unharmed) post-game and Inessa and Temperance (also exhausted) made their way back to their seats at the same time.

"If I never see a fidget spinner again for as long as I live," Inessa groaned as she approached. Temperance nodded wordlessly, looking ever so slightly frazzled.

I was too consumed with my own issues to bother with our usual dance of Inessa making very obvious slips about magical girl business and me pretending to misconstrue them. I simply pretended not to hear that.

"Sorry about that C! We, umm, ran into someone we know on the way and one of her friends was in trouble so we had to help out and, well, we lost track of time." Inessa dipped her head in apology.

Translation, they bumped into Avaratia Wolf, Gula Shark or some new leader of whatever shadowy force kept turning people into monsters, and she had a monster attack the gang. Ida tried to stick with the basketball game because this match was important but they couldn't defeat until she came and helped.

"Are they okay?" I asked despite myself.

"Well, everything is all fine now, but I think we still have some things to talk about with our friend next time we see her," Inessa only panicked a little as she tried to translate what had happened.

In other words, whichever general had shown up to lead the enemy had gotten away (it was probably Avaritia Wolf, I hadn't seen Gula Shark in any monster attacks since early December.)

Temperance nodded along stoically, "Right, she's still confused about a few things, but we'll help her see the light soon enough after all this."

Which is to say Temperance was livid, insofar as Temperance actually felt any emotions at all under that mask of hers, at whatever this fidget spinner themed monster had been and was probably totally determined to crush her enemy next time she saw her. I nodded pleasantly and hoped that there was a way out for Avaritia Wolf, or at least a quick painless end. Castitas was pure and straightforward and would never give up or surrender. Diligentia was athletic, hard-working and determined to do the right thing. Temperantia was simply terrifying.

"How'd the game go?" Inessa asked after a few awkward moments. .

"At first, without Ida, it seemed pretty bad," I admitted though I'd barely managed to pay attention, "but then they called a time out and talked some things over really intensely among each other and then they started to get hyped up and played a lot better and they managed to pull out a miraculous three point shot right at the last second that put them just in the lead."

Inessa sighed in relief. Temperance nodded thoughtfully.

"What?" I asked, unable to resist despite all my desire to be alone with my own thoughts.

"Ida was worried that she had to be in two places at once," Inessa said, "like everyone was depending on her." I managed to ignore that a hypothetical Ida who wasn't secretly a magical girl should have had no other responsibilities at all right now.

Temperance nodded, "And now she grasps her own irrelevance."

"And that's good?!" I managed to avoid raising my voice, but the idea of being like Ida; of being someone who could go out of my way to be there for everyone and then ending up learning that I wasn't really helping, just indulging myself… That would hurt.

"I wouldn't say it quite like that," Inessa clarified, "But she felt like she needed to hold up everything everywhere at once, and now she'll know she can rely on others too!"

"Yes," said Temperance even more woodenly than normal. "She will definitely learn her lesson this time."

Inessa poked the other girl in the cheek, "Unlike a certain someone who had to be taught her lesson how many times?"

Temperance did not dignify that with a response.

I had no idea what the exchange was about, and happily filed it away under the long list of things that would make my friends panic, lie, and then feel guilty about lying to me if I asked.

---

It wasn't a good weekend.

Dad wasn't pulling any shifts, so he lingered around the house in one of his moods. Usually I'd find an excuse to spend at least one day at Inessa's, but I didn't have it in me to face her with all the thoughts wreaking havoc in my head.

If Inessa wasn't an option, I tended to try to hide in my room and distract myself with all sorts of mindless online stories; but, given the content of what I tended to read, the attempt only served to drive me deeper into my own anxieties. This was reality and I was me and no one was going to show up to zap me into being someone useful and good no matter how nice that would be.

At least the absence of anything else I could do to distract myself from imploding drove me to devour my schoolwork with a desperate intensity I'd rarely managed. I would be hard pressed to remember much of what I accomplished. As a plus, I only had to listen to one of dad's rants about my conduct, my (lack of) prospects and the need to 'man up.'

And then, after several eternities, it was Monday morning and I could meet with Mr. Noir and get back to trying to work through whatever this was. I needed his help; he would make it all make sense if I just listened to him. I could trust him after all.

I left early for school and managed to dodge Inessa (and dad) and made my way to Mr. Noir's office. I couldn't say how, but I knew he would be there waiting for me.

Lupin was leaving Mr. Noir's office as I arrived; storm clouds on her face. I mumbled a hello, but she just growled at me and shoved past. I had no clue what had her in such a bad mood. I was tempted to break from my compulsion to see Mr. Noir and see if anything I could do to help; but something about Lupin's tone told me she might actually bite me if I tried to talk to her.

Anxiously, I knocked on his door.

"Ah, Charleton, perfect," he grinned at me. "Come in. I was just about to call for you."

I followed and took a seat.

"Hmm, you've certainly done a good job teasing your sins to the surface," he said, "though the form is still surprisingly vague. It would suffice for a mere monster, but…"

"What do you mean?" I asked, worried.

"I mean," he rose to his feet and swung his arms grandly, "that you've allowed your lusts, the essence of luxuria, to percolate through your thoughts, to transform your body into its vessel. And yet you hold yourself at the precipice, too bound by society's rules to take that leap that would set you apart from the lowly sheep around you. Are you ready, Charleton, to let loose that beast lurking deep in your soul, tear through these chains of false virtue holding you back and claim the power that should rightfully be yours?"

Mr. Noir offered me his hand as he spoke. His voice was as shrill and menacing as normal, but the anticipation was thick in his tone.

I hesitated. I had no idea what he was talking about, though obviously it had to make sense. This was the solution I needed. I needed to take his hand and become and all the anxiety and longing would finally stop.

"No?" I tried as gently as I could manage. I didn't want to offend him after all. Mr. Noir's teeth ground against each other as his expression slipped for a moment.

Hastily, I continued, "I want to. I'll be a beast if that's what it takes to really know myself and be someone I can live with or even just to stop obsessing over it all the time and get back to being there for my friends in whatever little way I could even once I really realize how much I hate what I am deep down."

I hesitated, that was true, but it didn't seem like it was quite what Mr. Noir wanted from me. "I get it," I clarified, "I don't like being me, being C or Charleton or Charlie or any of these disgusting useless pathetic boys. And the more I realize I don't like being me the more constantly I notice it and the harder it is to just hide from these feelings. If I have to become a beast to be anyone else, then I'll gladly become a beast if it means I can stop all this."

"Then why do you refuse to take my hand?" he asked, his tone clipped.

"I don't know what it is that I want. Sure, I see a cute girl and I find my head filled with all these strange thoughts and now they won't go away at all; but, where do they even go? Like, I'm a beast, not a magical girl and it hurts that I'll never stand on that stage with them and win their admiration and trust. How can I become a beast if I don't know what kindI?"

He looked at me appraisingly.

"Regrettable," Mr. Noir said, colder than I'd ever heard him, "Even now you insist on defying me. It seems like this method may be insufficient to the task."

"What does that mean?" he was starting to scare me.

"It has brought you to a simmer. You're clearly just too comfortable with the current status quo. What we need is an external catalyst, and a punishment is merited for wasting so much of my time" Mr. Noir ignored me.

"What?" I asked.

"It means we'll need a more dramatic strategy. Tell me, who in this school draws you the most?"

I wasn't sure. If there was anyone I dreamed about the most, it was Inessa. I admired her; I obsessed over her; I worried about her. I wanted to help her do what she had to do. I desperately wished I could be as amazing or even just half as confident and straightforward about my own needs as she was.

But if Mr. Noir was right about what I was thinking, then I refused to let the answer to that be Inessa. And that only left one other candidate. One person's actions had sent my daydreams into a tizzy and revealed how right Mr. Noir was about my underlying cravings.

"Temperance," I admitted after a pause.

"Seek her out," he demanded. "Talk to her. Tell her exactly what you want, let her see how depraved you really are and make her push you over the edge."

I shook my head frantically, "She'd never forgive me if I told her what I really was. I couldn't show my face in public ever again and," I couldn't talk to my friends, not until whatever this was was passed and I could exorcize whatever feelings were stuck inside me.

"That was not a request," Mr. Noir's mouth was leaking smoke. What was wrong with him? What was he?

I wanted to stand and run, but the full force of his eyes bore down on me and there was nothing to do but obey.

---

I stretched as I came out of Mr. Noir's office, almost unable to believe that I'd spent so long talking to him that it was already lunchtime. I should have been anxious about missing class, but I couldn't be bothered. For all the details of our conversation felt a little vague, I'd left Mr. Noir's office with a new sense of purpose. I knew now exactly how to pin everything down. The answer had been staring at me in the face the whole time.

Temperance had been wanting to have a talk anyway. Sure, I still had my issues, but something told me that I needed to have that conversation, that talking to Temperance would help me sort things out. Mr. Noir had been clear that I needed to seek out an alternative perspective on things. He was always right. I could trust him.

So I made my way to our usual lunch table and waited for the others to arrive.

"Hey," I said nervously once they'd sat down with food. "Temperance I'm, uh, feeling a lot better and there was something I wanted to talk to you about if that's okay, and I thought it might be a good time to talk over whatever it was you wanted to bring up last week?"

She hesitated for a long time, then led me out of the cafeteria. The hallway was mostly deserted and that seemed good enough for her. I didn't know why I couldn't have this conversation in the cafeteria itself, but she seemed to welcome the relative anonymity of a quiet hallway over the attention of our friends as much as I did.

"You go first?" I offered, surprised that she almost seemed to flinch. Temperance did not do anxiety. It was not within her repertoire of skills. What on earth was she trying to say?

Was she actually going to confess to me? I panicked at that thought. What would I do? Obviously she wouldn't want to date me if she knew me better and, really, it was ridiculous to imagine her judgment was that bad.

Besides, sure, I'd had a daydream or two about dating Temperance and I didn't dislike her, but it would make things even more awkward with Inessa. Really, I didn't even have time to date in the first place and, her jokes aside, obviously Temperance wouldn't actually try to force femme me or anything anyway.

At the same time, she was literally a hero. I owed her my life a few times over. Would it really be okay to turn her down just like that? I had no experience here. How was I supposed to let someone down gently!?

Temperance, ignoring my internal crisis, finally gathered herself. I tried to focus on her. I had to maintain a straight face. Obviously I was wrong, but if I wasn't, I couldn't risk letting anything show that might hurt her.

"I just want to make sure you know that we're here for you and," she trailed off for a long moment, then took a deep breath and stared me straight in the eyes, "you don't have to be a guy if you don't want to," Temperance spoke quietly and forced a smile that was probably meant to be comforting, but mostly looked deeply awkward on her face.

I froze, staring at her in abject confusion. Was she just messing with me again after all this build-up?

"We get put in boxes," she continued as if that was a segue that made sense, "And no one is encouraged to think about it. If everyone acts like there's nothing else, then no one has to ask if they ever really fit inside their box in the first place."

"But," she hesitated, "I want to make sure you know that the view from outside is worth it in the end. You can be a girl or anything else if you want and we'll—all of us—have your back, no matter what you end up."

I'd never heard Temperance be so loquacious before. Even her catchphrase and named attacks were delivered in a quiet deadpan. It was so absurd to see her like this that it would have been almost impossible to process the words if she hadn't stabbed each and every single one of them into the cracks in my heart. I'd have thought she was joking, but, well, for all her teasing Temperance was one of Inessa's friends and I couldn't imagine her being that mean on purpose. No, as nice as her vision sounded, as much as life would be so much easier for me if I could just decide to be a girl or something like that, she was just looking at me and trying to find a better person than the one in front of her.

At the end of the day, Temperance was a good person. Her speech was oddly similar to some of the things Mr. Noir had taught me, but Temperance made it all sound noble. Society forced us to conform. It strangled us. But where Mr. Noir saw me as someone who deserved to be repressed, Temperance was looking for a person who's opposition to the world would be valid. She was looking for a worthy core that simply didn't exist. At least I wouldn't have to find a way to turn her down.

"I'm not a transgender." I didn't manage to keep the frustration out of my voice, "It would be great if I was! I have nothing against them; I'm not my dad." No, I wasn't thinking about him now.

"But, look, if I was, if I could just press some magic button and be," I couldn't say the word, "that would be great. But I'm not; I'm a boy." I said the last words with some bitterness. No one, I was sure, could really want to be the gender that made Inessa and her friends shout "Boys" and all know exactly what the problem was. But some of us were stuck with it.

"And I've never felt like I was or could be anything else no matter how much I wished I wasn't. If I have a problem, it's not that I'm a girl trapped in the wrong body. If anything, I'm drowning in how much a pathetic perverted boy I am."

I felt something against my cheek. They weren't tears; boys don't cry. My lungs had stopped working for some reason. That wasn't enough to stop me. I had to let her know what I was, what she was really dealing with.

"It sucks but that's what I am: just another dumb perverted teenage boy who hides every sick thought in his head even while he's fantasizing all sorts of terrible things about you deep down. So, yes, I want to be a magical girl. Who wouldn't want to be powerful and brave and beautiful and have everyone look up to them? But I don't get to do that because I'm not a girl or a good person. I'm just some weird deviant that can't be content standing in the background where he belongs and keeps dreaming of stealing the spotlight to satisfy his narcissism when he won't do anything to deserve it in the first place."

I paused for breath and found I could barely breathe. Saying that hadn't helped. Admitting that I was some pervert who wished he could be a girl so he could fit in better with his friends, had not brought about any catharsis. I remained a creepy, ugly, clumsy, useless, waste of a boy that couldn't even get his mom to stay or his dad to respect him.

Every student in the hall was staring at me now and a few heads had poked around corners and out of classrooms at my shouting. I tried to find some reaction I could make, to play it off and go back to being invisible. My eyes made contact with Inessa's as she exited the cafeteria. She stared at me with concern in her eyes.

Temperance, likewise, stared at me with undisguised compassion. Of course they would worry. They were good people. And as much as I wished I could be like them, I didn't belong.

I ran.

---

I found myself in the dark in an empty house that once felt safe and welcoming a few years ago. The school would call and they would be upset, and that would make dad upset and then I would have a bad week. I was being dumb. I couldn't afford to miss any classes. But, the thought of returning after that, with everyone staring at me?

Worse, what if Inessa or any of them tried to understand, to brush aside this part of me and tell me I was just going through hard times? I could survive their disgust; forgiveness would break me.

No, better to sit in the dark with my own thoughts and hope dad worked late. At least, in silence and darkness I could pretend I was no one at all. It would be so easy if I could just abandon everything and be someone else without my baggage, with a hint of Temperance's stoicism or Inessa's charm or Ida's indefatigability. I would love to be someone cute and nice and as different from me as the sun from the moon. But no force on earth could do that. And I still didn't know what I was missing to let Mr. Noir help me even after all that.

The doorbell rang. I ignored it; It rang again, then again, and again. I couldn't make myself answer it. But a part of me needed to know if Inessa was coming to help, or if Temperance had come to break me again.

I got up from the table and went to my bedroom so I could steal a glance out from the second floor window. There, against all reason, stood Lupin Noir. As if she could sense me watching, she lifted her head. Her eyes met mine and she smiled savagely, like a cat who'd just realized its prey was cornered and now it could savor the game.

Then she opened the front door and let herself into my house.

I was too exhausted to parse what was happening. Maybe she'd been possessed or something and I was about to be eaten by a monster. The possibility felt oddly welcoming; I wouldn't have to explain that outburst to anyone; I wouldn't have to crave something I couldn't name.

I sat at the window, waiting as her footsteps slowly made their way up the stairs. Gently, almost mockingly, she knocked on my door. I didn't answer. She opened the door anyway.

I was wrong, I realized, as she looked me up and down. It wasn't Lupin. Sure, her face, build and general aesthetic looked oddly similar, and she shared Lupin's trademark purple highlights, but this girl had a large pair of wolf ears on her head and a tail.

Her outfit looked like a twisted reflection of Inessa's, keeping the frills and assorted ribbons, but trading the skirt for a pair of shorts and a tighter top that managed to slim her build down instead of accentuating it. All she was missing was the halo. She made up for it by exuding chaotic malice and having a pair of wicked claws I'd seen tear through concrete.

I recognized her instantly: Avaritia Wolf. She was the most persistent and dangerous of the Saints' enemies, and the most frequent culprit behind the many monster attacks I'd stumbled into.

"Hiya Luxuria; I'd say it's a pleasure to finally meet you as me, but uncle dearest has told me alllll about what a messed up little freak you really are deep down, so I honestly have no idea why we're welcoming you into the fold." She even sounded like Lupin, though the other girl's basic compassion was nowhere to be found in Avaritia's eyes. That was for the best. Being looked at like I was a cockroach she wanted desperately to crush hurt a lot less than the thought of tolerance in Inessa's eyes.

I wanted to run, to scream, to at least go down trying futilely to fight back. Any of the magical girls I admired so much would have done that and more. But the scents of cinnamon and copper were in the air, so I followed her mutely downstairs and then outside. She walked to the wall of a nearby building for a moment, before slashing out with one claw to tear a rift in the world in front of us.

Avaritia pulled it wider, then spun on one heel to knock one of Castitas' fire arrows out of the air.

"Get away from him," Castitas shouted. Her voice was alien, furious in a way I'd never seen her. It wouldn't matter. She was too far away to reach me.

"Sorry Inessa," I had just enough time to give her a sad smile before Avaritia Wolf dragged me through the portal.


NEXT WEEK ON SHINING VIRTUE ANGELIC HEART!!!

Oh no, Charlie's been kidnapped by Avaritia Wolf and taken to the mysterious Abyssal Forest! With Michael's reluctant help, Castitas, Temperantia and Diligentia chase after Avaritia to stage a rescue attempt. But, just as they think they may succeed, the mysterious leader of the Abyssal Forest makes his appearance!

Tune in for episode 15: Rescue from the Abyssal Forest! Superbia Dragon Appears!

Spoiler: Author's Notes

So, C finally hits their nadir! Hopefully things improve for our poor protagonist from here on out though!

I know it helps some people, but the idea of being 'trapped in the wrong body' never really sat with me. In practice, I think it kinda promulgated a view of transness as something essential that you can't help but know about yourself. That's what C's heard and, well, their self esteem isn't really there to come to terms with themselves at this point, and Mr. Noir's done a lot of damage in the past few days, but I do kind of think that having a very misguided set of beliefs about how you have to be able to construct yourself to be trans is a part of it and something I wanted to pull out in this one.

I'm reaching the end of the chapters I have more solidly edited, so things may slow down a bit after 4 comes out, but I am trying to space things up to keep up with reworks on later bits.

 

[Shadell]

Avaritia dragged me through the portal and into a strange not-place that was neither dark nor quiet, but a place where sight and sound lacked any meaning whatsoever. I could have lost my mind there, if we'd stayed too long. Instead Avaritia Wolf pulled us both out on the far side of nothingness.

We stumbled into a dimly lit palace. It was a horrible place, but at least it was a place. That made it comparatively comforting. It was, however, not so comforting that I didn't fall to my knees in a nauseous dizzy mess.

Something brushed against my back, surprisingly gently. Avaritia's claws were weapons that could block even the Saints' powers, could cut through concrete or steel or even that strange void itself. It was easy to picture them tearing through my spine and ending everything. And yet, she rubbed my back with surprising delicacy, a moment of quiet care utterly incongruous with her past actions or her attitude toward me.

"It's not so bad once you get used to it," she said, not unkindly. It seemed even knowing exactly what kind of pond scum I was deep down didn't stop her from expressing some kindness in the wake of that terrifying nothingness. Perhaps monsters simply knew their own.

Eventually I managed to stand. I wanted to run, whatever compulsion to obey that let her bring me here having faded in the void. But, where would I even go?

We stood in a profoundly ostentatious hall. It was wide, but poorly lit, and I couldn't see the ceiling in the gloom. Cyclopean columns held up, strange monoliths to some forgotten age. We stood on a long purple carpet leading to a massive set of double doors on one side, and a much thinner hall on the other.

"Come on," Avaritia stepped past me and grabbed my arm, roughly pulling me toward the doors. Whatever moment of shared suffering had stretched between us was gone now.

They parted before her, groaning loudly as they allowed us into a polished throne room. It was illuminated by pale blue lanterns attached to the walls. At one end stood a throne, carved from what seemed to be solid obsidian. Sitting in it was Mr. Noir.

I had no clue why Avaritia had grabbed me and my poor innocent school guidance counselor, but if one of us was going to escape it was clear that he deserved it more than me. I could tolerate being kidnapped. This was hardly the first time, even if it was the most extreme. I couldn't let them involve an innocent (in whom I'd confided all my darkest secrets.) I smiled at him in greeting and then, just as he started to speak, threw myself at Avaritia with every bit of force I could muster.

"Run!" I shouted desperately, "I don't know why they captured us, but it can't be good. I'll hold her off! There has to be a way for you to escape."

I failed to budge Avaritia, who mostly ignored the attempt. For a moment, she looked more surprised than offended. Then she doubled over laughing.

Mr. Noir, for his part, looked mildly offended, "I assure you Charleton," he said, with a disapproving glare at the greedy wolf, "that I have no need to run! For I!" he paused dramatically, "Am the master of this domain!"

"What," I shook my head, "Look, this is no time for jokes! You need to run while she's distracted!"

Mr. Noir shook his head, "I suppose your loyalty is admirable, if not your intellect."

Behind us, Avaritia finally got herself under control, only to break out into giggles again at Mr. Noir's aside.

Then he raised a hand; the light took him and Avaritia's laughter died. It swallowed him up from head to toe in apocalyptic glory. I closed my eyes and turned my head and still found myself blinking dark spots from my vision. Only when it faded did I dare look back.

Mr. Noir had become a demon. Still thin and reedy, he was even taller now, with his hands and feet replaced by scaled claws and a set of large golden curved horns on his head. A massive pair of batlike wings tipped in spikes of protruding bone adorned his back. His eyes were slit like a snake's, but there was something wrong in them; like they held something that was not at all known to life. Those eyes were eerily familiar.

"I," he said in the same reedy voice, "am Superbia Dragon, Beast of the Abyssal Forest! Viceroy of Sin!"

I bit my tongue to prove I wasn't dreaming. I wasn't a magical girl at the moment, so I obviously wasn't having one of those dreams. But the idea that Mr. Noir was evil was simply so impossible. I guess it made sense that he kept asking about sin and becoming a beast and destroying society's rules and living a life of pure egocentrism. And he was always saying nasty things to me while trying to help. Okay when I put it like that it seemed pretty obvious, but he just seemed so...

Moments ago it had been beyond doubt that he was good, that I should trust him. And now I found any attempt to think back on our conversations tinged with fear and disgust in equal measures. I remembered where I had seen those eyes.

"You messed with my head," I accused. I was terrified of course. This was worse than any monster attack yet. But the betrayal left me too hurt to give in to fear. I didn't open up about my feelings. It never worked out and even Inessa didn't get to hear everything going on in my head. Mr. Noir had knocked down those walls and dredged up thoughts better left sleeping on the promise of helping me. And then he'd used them to twist me around in the worst ways.

He shook his head, "Only to help you of course! You weren't yet ready to face your true potential, to open yourself to the power of Luxuria and take all those things you've denied yourself for so long."

Avaritia rumbled behind me, a low menacing growl that left little mystery of how she felt about that proposition. I guess it made sense. This probably wasn't how they made normal monsters, so Superbia was trying to turn me into a new lieutenant or something. And obviously Avaritia wouldn't want to work with someone like me. Noir must have told her about all our talks; another betrayal for the pile.

Superbia paid no attention to my simmering mix of fear, disgust and self-loathing. I hated how easily I was lulled into going along with his manipulations. Magic or no, I knew the desires that he spoke of were all too real. His influence had found purchase because a part of me craved that kind of easy self-realization.

"You see, when you kept getting attacked by monsters it was plain to me that they were drawn to you because of the great potential hiding in you. When we met, I was able to confirm your potential and verify the presence of a satisfactory darkness in your heart. It was just a matter of divining its form in its nascent state—lust of course—and drawing enough out to the surface that you would be a qualified vessel for this!"

He held something up to the sky: a large black seed about the size of a finger. "Behold! the Seed of Luxuria!"

I tried to break and run past Avaritia. No matter how useless, there was no way I was going to let them turn me into fertilizer.

Naturally, it took her all of a second to sweep my legs out from under me, then grab my arm and drag me to my feet, twisting it behind my back as she held me up to face Superbia Dragon.

"I can forgive your disrespect in light of your unfamiliarity to our cause, but I assure you that you'll appreciate this in time Charleton," even now I winced at the name. I didn't even let dad call me that. Everything else he'd done was disturbing in the worst ways and somehow that pushed it over the line. What kind of terrifying magic had let this guy pass as anything but an absolute creep?

The seed floated up from his hand, bleeding darkness into the throne room as it floated slowly toward me. I struggled with everything I had, but couldn't escape Avaritia's vice-like grip. She seemed all too glad to see me suffer.

Slowly it crossed the distance, pausing ominously in front of my forehead for just a moment.

I screamed, I begged. Neither Superbia nor Avaritia nor the seed paid my pleas the slightest attention.

With a crack, the seed shot at me. Then it thudded painfully against my head and bounced to the ground where it rolled harmlessly to the side.

For one agonizingly long moment all three of us stood there in silence.

"Was that supposed to happen?" I asked awkwardly.

The scathing look Superbia sent my way provided a strong indication that no, that was not supposed to happen, and also that it was probably my fault. That would show him for having expected anything from me.

"Obviously our estimations of his readiness were premature. No matter, my plan is perfect and he shall come to harbor Luxuria in due time."

"Avaritia Wolf," the girl dropped to one knee, leaving me unguarded. I wasn't brave or impulsive enough to take the chance to run, "this is your fault for grabbing him before he was ready. Push him over the edge and I will allow this mistake to go unpunished."

She froze, cold sweat visible on her brow, and lowered her head. "As you command Lord Superbia." I wondered how much worse he must have been to her than me if the fierce wolf who happily fought three against one with Inessa, Temperance and Ida was so terrified of disobedience.

With an imperious wave of his hand, Superbia dismissed us. Avaritia wasted no time silently dragging me out of the throne room and down the long corridor in which we'd materialized into the rest of the demented castle..

The palace was impossibly labyrinthine, full of all sorts of strange rooms. Avaritia marched quickly. The layout proved no obstacle to her. Her strong grip on my arm as we went kept me from getting lost or making an escape. I had room to absorb very little of our surroundings in any depth. But I spied glimpses of boxing rings and swimming pools and studio stages, all in the same brooding gothic aesthetic.

The one thing I didn't see was another living being besides Avaritia and me.

"Look," she said with a grimace, "I have stuff to do and I'm sure neither of us wants to spend any time with each other."

I winced at that, "Sorry," I offered reflexively, then winced again as I realized I'd just apologized to my kidnapper for being an inconvenience, "I can't imagine you'd want to be stuck dealing with me."

Avaritia's lip twitched into the beginning of a smile that she ruthlessly tamped down.

"Look, just, nap or something or whatever you need to get a handle on yourself and I'll be back once I've done some other jobs. Then we can hash out exactly what we'll do with you."

I tried to thank her, out of reflex as much as anything else, but found my room door slammed in my face before I could manage a word.

I waited a few anxious minutes, then tried the knob. The door was locked and throwing myself against it proved entirely useless.

The room had nothing in it but a carpet and a large four poster bed. That left me with little opportunity for anything but my own thoughts and fears. Mr. Noir had betrayed me; I'd opened up to him in a way I barely opened up to anyone—and okay most of that was probably mind control or hypnosis or whatever—and he'd used that to drag me here. And I'd just let him do it. I'd looked up to him and…

I threw myself at the door in frustration, earning nothing but bruises for my efforts. Eventually I tried punching a pillow instead. That also didn't help, but it was a lot less painful.

After who knows how long, the roaring fire of betrayal that threatened to burn my heart gave way to a much slower and colder feeling. I was trapped and not even Inessa could save me here. They would try to use me and then, because I was me, probably fail. Then they'd get rid of me and I refused to imagine that outcome as anything but a negative.

I should have spent my time trying to find my way out. I did manage the door a few more times, but it proved resistant to my nonexistent lock-picking skills. Besides, there came a point in worrying where it was easier to turn my head and stop thinking about things I was powerless to change. Eventually sleep claimed me.

---

I woke to the sight of Avaritia's lupine eyes staring down at me.

"Wha?" I asked awkwardly as I recalled exactly where I was and why.

"Feeling better?" she asked, sounding marginally less upset at my existence than she had earlier.

"No," I admitted after taking a few moments to process the question, "bad dreams."

"Okay fine," she accepted, "maybe kinda our fault, but I've officially run out of other things to do. Believe me, I'd rather be anywhere else but, well.." she shrugged. Superbia's orders were not to be disobeyed.

"Okay," if I wanted to escape, I needed to lull them into security. That meant playing along, "so now what?"

"What's your deal?" she asked, crossing her arms defensively in front of her chest.

"What?" I asked cleverly.

"Look, whatever Superbia said, we can both sense the darkness radiating off of you. You're practically coated in sin and if anything it's only gotten more intense since you've gotten here. Now, sure, neither of us is as good as Gula was at interpreting that, but you're more than ready enough! So what's your deal? Why didn't Luxuria bind to you?"

I hesitated, "I don't know? It probably should have. You said it yourself, I'm a sick freak right? I'm not hiding that anymore after I basically shouted it to the entire school, so, no, I don't have a clue why that didn't work!"

She bared her teeth for a moment. I flinched. She sighed, then shook her head energetically from side to side, clearing her thoughts.

"Okay," she said, "let's take a step back. What did you shout to the entire school?"

Great, now even Lupin's evil doppelganger wanted to catch up on gossip. Still, I'd said everything I'd been holding back to people whose opinions I valued far more. I'd admitted what Mr. Noir had pointed out to me. And I was more than bitter enough at Avaritia and all of her monsters: the endless kidnappings; the powerlessness, the harm they did to everyone around them. I could inflict my issues on her and feel only a little guilty about it.

"I told the entire school that I'm a pervert," I thought I had, I honestly couldn't remember exactly what I'd said to Temperance's impossible suspicion. "I see girls, even ones who I've known so long and been so close to for practically my whole life and I can't stop thinking about how beautiful they are. I get fixated on it and no matter how hard I try the thoughts just keep bouncing around my skull. And I just end up wishing…"

Avaritia's claw reached out toward my throat before she visibly restrained herself. "Wish what Charleton? Do you want to kiss them? Date them? Sleep with them? Own them? Tie them up and keep them in your basement?"

Despite the sudden panic, the knowledge that I was inches away from death, I couldn't help but recoil at that last image.

"No, that feels gross to even think about! I just want, you know, something!"

"Something perverted," she said slowly, "but nothing romantic or sexual?"

"Exactly!" Finally someone got it! Perhaps she should have been the sham guidance counselor instead of Superbia.

For what it was worth, I seem to have succeeded in leaving Avaritia exactly as mystified as I was by all of this. And, well, it was oddly relieving that even an otherworldly incarnation of sin would find me as puzzling as I found myself.

Slowly, she withdrew her arm and placed her palm to her forehead, "Okay. First, we really need to get you a dictionary. Second, take a step back. Who do you think you're fixating on here the most? Who makes these feelings the strongest?"

The answer was as easy as it was uncomfortable, "Castitas," I mumbled. I'd had fantasies involving Temperance and I. I'd told Mr. Noir that I dreamed of being with her the most; and it was true. But it wasn't her image that worked its way into my thoughts and refused to leave.

"Right," she flicked an ear, "And how, exactly do you feel when you imagine Castitas."

"It's," I hated admitting it. I hated bottling it up even more, "She's beautiful and strong and powerful and she always knows what to do to save the day and here I'm just useless garbage who keeps getting kidnapped, who can barely keep his grades up and always needs to be rescued. Like, I see her and it's not even worth trying really, because I'll never manage to be half of what she already is."

Avaritia's eyes softened and something unrecognizable made its way across her face, "So you admire her. And that makes you a pervert? Walk me through that," the anger was mostly gone now. Confusion having supplanted it so thoroughly, there was little room left to look down on me.

"I, uh," I couldn't hide it unless I was ready for her to tear me to pieces. "I dream about being a magical girl all the time, about joining them and getting to be that strong, heroic and cu-cool and that's weird because I'm not a girl, so I definitely don't get to be a magical one and boys shouldn't want to be magical girls in the first place! And even if I somehow could, it's not like someone who only wants to show off or be special would deserve it. "

There, I'd said it, now Avaritia could go back to treating me like the scum I really was. Instead, She stared at me in absolute bafflement for what felt like hours. Finally, something seemed to spark in her eyes. It spread throughout her face, which obligingly morphed into a knowing grin.

Her smile was wide and enthusiastic and showed altogether too many sharp teeth for my comfort. Somehow she seemed to have looked at me and seen an entirely different person.

"Ohhhhhh, no I take it all back," she was practically bouncing in place for some reason. "This is great! We're going to be the best partners ever and wow did Superbia misread you."

"I, uh, wha?" I offered lucidly.

"See C!" she paused at that and then giggled, "See C that's pretty good. Anyway! The seeds look scary and Superbia explained it badly but that's mostly because he's kinda a pretentious old guy and honestly your earth books have only made him worse since we got here.."

She shook her head, "What I'm saying is that this will be good for you! And, like, you have a real need for the power and I just so happen to need a cute partner now that Gula's," something caught in her throat and she shook her head side to side. "Nope, not moping about her right now, this is C time!"

And then the enthusiastic gremlin was back. Her tail was wagging.

"You have to understand that a sin, at least as far as the Forest is concerned, isn't an act. It's not hurting others or making things worse. It's a state of mind, you know? And, like, take wrath. Lots of people get very angry, but some of them have a good reason and some of them have really bad ones and maybe sometimes you should be a little wrathful, or maybe you need to take a break and sleep it off even if that makes you feel guilty."

She nodded, clearly satisfied with this explanation. "Everyone has feelings and some of those feelings are dark and they hurt but that doesn't make them fake or worthless. It's just a part of you and one you just don't get yet."

Okay, yes, she had realized something (or thought she had) and immediately changed the subject and I had no idea why, but that did almost sound plausible. But Superbia's nonsense had sounded plausible too. I wish I could write off my feelings like that. It would be nice if there was some benign truth I had yet to understand. I couldn't make myself believe it; not after Superbia had tried the same line, not after Temperance had gone looking for it and gotten so obviously wrong. Also my main experience with Avaritia bringing people's sins to the surface involved her turning them into monsters and sending them out to wreak havoc.

Heedless of my disbelief, Avaritia continued.

"Some of us need that emotion to face ourselves. There's a power in it, and maybe it has some barbs, but sometimes people need those barbs to hold themselves together. I used to try to deny my own desires. But Superbia gave me the seed of greed and," she sighed. "It taught me how to admit to wanting, to be okay with it and it gave me the power to seize what I needed for me and mine, to embrace that desire and make that desperation into a power all its own."

She smiled at me, "Now, if you were like, a weird creepy incel dude, having to work with you would just suck because who wants to team up with some weirdo perv, but that's not you C and I'm forbidding you from beating yourself up like that!"

"I, what!?" She had been the one doing most of the beating! Both verbally and threatening the physical. Also I had literally zero idea how we had gone from her figuring out my deepest issues not even I understood to her trying to build a philosophy of sin.

She hugged me, careful to avoid impaling me on her horrifically sharp claws, "Yep, yep! This is going to be perfect. Like, once we get you the right sin it'll help you out so much and I'll get a partner who will get it and understand how good all of this is! We can plan together, fight together and go shopping and hang out on weekends. Anyway the point is this will be great for both of us, so just let me stick an evil seed in you!"

"I, uh, I'm not joining you or turning evil? You'll have to kill me first," I tried to find some scrap of defiance. Superbia's violations had raised my hackles in a way I shouldn't, couldn't, forgive.

But between the surreality of this conversation going from interrogation to recruitment speech and the way Avaritia seemed so perky, it was hard to keep track of what emotions I was supposed to be enacting here. I could see why Inessa was always complaining about how someone so evil could be so cute.

"Sure you are. Trust me, sin will be a great look on you!"

Somehow, Avaritia being enthusiastically supportive was far eerier and more threatening than her murderous rage. "Besides," she continued, heedless of my deer in the headlights look, "even if you try to resist, I'm a greedy greedy wolf and that means I take the things I want! And I want you to be my partner and figure yourself out and stop with the whole self-loathing thing and just relax and start indulging in all the cute stuff you've never been allowed to have. And once you're sorted we can show those pesky Saints that actually I'm doing great and I am not at all in the wrong here! Besides, our team is the best; you'll agree once you get it."

It was hard to keep up with the conversation. Avaritia was in her own world and I was merely allowed to spectate.

"But, like, let's take a step back." she said, "I'm Avaritia Wolf, any pronouns."

"Oh no!" I flailed, "Everyone's been misgendering them? Him? Uh, You, right that's how it works. It's still 'you' when I'm talking to you and, umm, sorry!"

They laughed and patted me on the head, "No worries. I said any so I mean any and that means she is fine. I mean, honestly, I've been liking the idea of trying out Spivak a lot lately" I had no clue what that word meant, "But, well, Superbia's himself and you gotta be careful how you talk to him. And coming out as an enbie would be hard while, you know, just saying that 'oooh, look at me I am soooo greedy. I have to have alllllll the pronouns all to myself, how strange the nature of sin' is pretty easy, and he will absolutely roll with basically anything you justify like that."

"That's awful," I winced, wondering what it would be like to be unable to tell your closest companions who you really were. If Gula was gone (I wasn't going to think about what that might mean just now) I could see why Avaritia craved a friend so badly. Her only remaining companionship was a superior who bossed her around and yelled at him all the time and didn't even accept them for themself.

"Nah, it works out in the end, he's totally chill with basically anything you can justify under feeding your sin. Like, with you, when you turn into a girl, we'll just lie and say you were so overcome by the inertia to fit in that you turned into one of them as completely as possible, and need to use she/her pronouns to affirm your sin or something. He'll get confused and have a boomer moment and then shrug and go along with it."

I, what. GIRL? How could they just say that he was going to turn me and I was, how, why, what. That. Thoughts; I couldn't do them.

"Anyway," Avaritia grinned despite the grave psychic damage he'd just inflicted, "You're going to be the cutest bestest teammate who I can spoil and who'll stick with me to the end unlike that pesky shark!"

Intellectually I knew Avaritia Wolf was evil. Intellectually, I knew she was directly responsible for at least three situations where I'd gotten attacked by a monster. He cooperated with Superbia, who I definitely hated. It was extremely hard to remember that when they looked like an excited puppy at greater risk of chasing their own tail to let off energy than actually hurting anyone.

"And I am so sorry I just assumed you were a piece of garbage who wasn't even worth scraping off my boot before! Honestly, I should have known better than to trust Superbia over my own instincts on you."

Okay, it was oddly nice that she wanted to make me a girl friend… A friend! Not a girl, well, she did seem to want to make me both a friend and a girl but not like that and also that second part was very weird and I must have just misheard her. Right; that was just me being weird again, she had definitely said something else. I was not going to ask what because that would be awkward and even if all of this was strange, showing her what a pervert I was wouldn't actually improve my conditions over whatever idea she'd worked into his head.

But this wasn't actually good because I still didn't want to turn evil and hurt my actual friends, even if I did feel a little bad for the wolf now and even if my friends didn't wantto be my friends anymore after what I'd admitted. They were still the good team. I had to delay him until I could find a way out.

"Can we take a step back a bit. You think you know what's wrong with me?"

They shook their head frantically, "No, no, you see C, there's nothing wrong with you! Or well, nothing wrong with your head or your feelings. You just can't want the things you want yet!"

She paused and looked at me hopefully. I shook my head. He hung his theatrically.

"Maybe you can't explain how you could have it, so you think about it, but you can't bring yourself to admit you want what you want and legitimize yourself and I could just tell you but then you'd just growl and resist and bite me and then go all guilty and be all 'woe is me' for a month and shut down and refuse to think about anything. Gula did that back in the day before we got her sorted out! Anyway, that's what the seed will help with! It'll feed on your sins, those nasty dark longings you can't deal with and then it'll use that power to give you what you need even if you're still scared to want it!"

I gave up following Avaritia's words around the fifth time she said want.

"O-okay, so you're going to stick one of those seeds in me then?" I couldn't afford to be passive, and I couldn't stand against Avaritia. However much they'd inexplicably decided they actually liked me, he could still crush me like a bug. I had to outthink her here, "So I guess you should go get it and I can wait. I'm not sold on joining you or anything of course, but I don't have a choice so we may as well get it all over with and," I spoke a little more honestly than I wanted to admit, "if it actually can help me get past whatever this is, I'm willing to try most anything."

If she thought I was resigned, and left me alone, I could try to run or hide while they went to grab the seed. It wasn't a great plan, but it was the best I had.

Naturally, it immediately crashed and burned as Avaritia snapped her fingers and a dark green seed that looked just like Luxuria appeared in the air between us.

"No need to wait! We're in the Forest and Sin is fond of its beasts. The seeds are only ever a moment away!"

I had just enough time to regret my chosen plan before she grabbed the seed out of the air and slammed it into my chest with what had to be all the force he could muster.

Sleep's comforting embrace kept me from worrying what horrors might come.
---

I dreamt of dark roots spreading throughout my body like a second nervous system. They twisted around my spine and stuck barbs into my veins to sup my blood. I tried to scratch myself, to tear at my flesh until I could get them out of me, but the plant would not be stopped. Threadlike tendrils perforated my muscles, seizing control of my body from me. They surrounded my heart in a protective sphere of dark green brambles that tore my insides to shreds with every breath so they could spread more, devouring me inch by inch by inch, until nothing of Charlie remained but a thin skin hiding a twisted sapling.

At least, I thought, I could help a beautiful tree grow.

I awoke to find myself on a soft bed in a brightly lit room surrounded by familiar plushies and pink walls stenciled with all sorts of flowers. I turned to glance at a nearby desk and chair, wincing at how sore my body felt. A redhead sat there, slumped over and snoring lightly, her head cradled in her arms.

So Inessa had saved me again then, her and her friends. They'd charged into danger just to rescue me. There was what looked like the start of a horrible bruise on Inessa's arm, so it wasn't even like they'd made it out unscathed; I'd hurt them again with my uselessness.

Something about the thought sent a wave of aching pain throughout my body and I failed to muffle a groan.

Inessa, a light sleeper at the best of times, bolted upright, lifting her arms into a defensive stance and then, without a hint of chagrin, turned and practically sprinted to my bedside.

"C?" she asked.

"I'm fine," I muttered, "I think. Just a little sore unless I've lost a leg or something beneath these covers or they did something else to me."

"Oh, I'm glad I, uh," she paused and self-consciously cradled her bruised arm, "Castitas said that she couldn't find anything wrong with you when she dropped you off and that you seemed to be fine, but that you might need to rest up."

I nodded. There was no way Inessa hadn't heard me call her by name earlier, but we still kept the fragile lie between us, "Castitas dropped me off here?"

She couldn't meet my gaze, "R-right, she probably had, like, magical girl powers to find your home or something."

"Magical girl powers to drop me off across the street from my house."

"W-well," Inessa shifted uneasily, "We, I mean, they couldn't just leave you with your dad like this. Who knows what he'd do if you needed help or weren't okay or…"

"He's not that bad," I said reflexively, "He's never actually hurt me or anything. He just hasn't dealt with mom leaving that well either."

"C…" she looked like she wanted to say something but couldn't find the words.

"Sorry, I don't want to start a fight about that again. He's going through a tough time too," I trailed off awkwardly. This was hell; she knew I knew, she had to. And yet neither of us could bring ourselves to say it.

"Inessa," I managed at last, "thanks for saving me."

She eeped and froze, "I didn't, I mean, what, saved, but Castitas, what I mean is…." she sought futilely for an explanation before sagging into the desk mortified, "You're welcome."

"Really, thanks. I'm sorry that I'm always making more work for all of you."

"C you're being ridiculous," she mock glared at me, and just like that the wall was gone and we could go back to being us, "it is not more work to save you from the monsters we'd be fighting anyway. Iif anything I'm sorry you keep getting stuck in our fights even though you're not involved."

I winced as my attempts to shake my head furiously at Inessa's completely misguided suggestion that somehow she owed me an apology set off another burst of aching pain.

"Umm, C," she asked hesitantly, "W-when did you figure it out?"

I couldn't meet her gaze, "I think it was when you were fighting B-Baller? Ida called you by your name and you kept slipping up on calling me C when you tried to get me out of that giant basketball. And then you outed Temperance on her first day of school and also her name is Temperance"

She stared at me quietly, as her face contorted into a rictus of terror, "B-B-B-Baller was NOVEMBER!"

I winced, "You, uh, didn't seem to want to share and I felt like I had to respect it if you wanted to keep me out of things."

She hung her head, "Michael thought it would be safer to keep things secret and, well, I can't tell my parents or they'd worry and I didn't want to worry you and then it had already been so long and I couldn't bring myself to say it even if I was worried that you would think we were all hiding stuff from you."

"That sounds rough," I offered.

"W-wait, if you knew then then it means that you knew, like, every time you said all those nice things about Castitas or all those times I pretended not to recognize you when I saved you and acted like you were a stranger?!" Inessa flushed bright red as I chuckled awkwardly.

"Well, you know how it is, it seemed important to keep the secret and I didn't want to put more pressure on you or anything!" I offered a weak defense.

"C," her voice was cold as she pouted, "That's not fair! Here I've been agonized about having to put on a mask and act all mysterious and you've known and been laughing at me this whole time!"

I fought through the soreness to sit up, "Inessa, I knew you were silly long before you were a magical girl."

She marched over to the bed and thwacked me with a pillow. I did my best to ignore it.

"You're a hero you know. My hero," I stifled a groan as I forced myself up and patted her gently on the head. "To think that little girl I had to protect from bullies would grow up to fight monsters."

"I'm glad," she hugged me, practically falling onto the bed, "I've worried that, with so much time doing this and not being able to say anything and that we'd drift apart or stop being friends or…."

"Inessa," I smiled indulgently, "you're like my sister; you know, a bratty baby sister that's kind of embarrassing because she won't stop blatantly crushing on every pretty girl at school." Inessa did not stop hugging me, but she did pinch my side liightly, "I mean," the words dried up in my mouth. It was hard to reassure her when I knew she'd probably be right in the long term. But that was a thought for another time.

"I mean, I said a lot of pretty nasty stuff before I got caught. I want to blame that all on Mr. Noir brainwashing me, but if you don't forgive me or you don't want to see me again or you want me to not be around you in public or anything I'd totally understand. It's what I deserve."

The urgency, the pressing need to resolve everything now had faded, but the desires and drives that had made me so vulnerable to Mr. Noir's influence hadn't gone away, for all they'd returned to the point where I hadn't thought of them until I thought about them. Could I trust Avaritia's words that I had misunderstood myself? I hadn't turned into a catgirl and Inessa didn't seem to think I would, so it had probably been another mistake.

Inessa just hugged me tighter, sniffling a little, "Idiot," she said affectionately, "like whatever you said could be any more embarrassing than that time in fourth grade you said you wanted to grow up to be Princess Sirius."

"A-anyway, if I'm fine and I have a Castitas approved bill of health, I should probably get home," I cut that line of conversation off as hastily as I could.

"Nope," she answered, "not happening."

"I can't just steal your bed and what will your parents say if they find out I was in your room at night!?"

"Putting you up here tonight was their idea," Inessa noted, "they were just super insistent that you stay the night after we managed to talk them out of dragging you right to the hospital. They gave me specific orders to stop you from being an idiot and trying to go back to your place and everything." The last sentence was delivered with an air of triumph.

"Why?" Why would they feel comfortable letting someone like me here when I could just as easily go home to dad?

"Oh come on, it's not that hard!" Inessa smiled, "They've known you since you were tiny and they adore you, honestly probably more than they like me. When I came out, my mom literally said her only regret was that this meant she wouldn't get to have you as a son in law. And, well, you don't talk about home much, but, we know you C."

Oh. Of course I wasn't doing a good job at hiding how bitter things had gotten. Of course I was just inflicting myself on more people, when it wasn't like they could actually change anything or even understand really. Here I was, making myself into a problem they were obligated to look after. I hated feeling like that, especially when things weren't that bad in the big picture and the plan was to move out in fall to go to college anyway.

But, I was too tired to think about that. And, pity or not, unhelpful or not, the fact that they were looking at me enough to notice, that they cared enough to pity, that felt good.

"Did they really think there was actually a chance we'd end up together?" I didn't have the energy to process things, and juicy gossip about Inessa's agonizingly wonderful family was a more than welcome distraction.

Inessa laughed, "I know right!"

We lay there, whispering and giggling next to each other for a long while, using quiet gossip to heal a bond that had begun to fray and to avoid thinking about the larger thoughts lurking deeper in our heads. Somewhere in the middle of that I fell back into a quiet dreamless sleep.



NEXT WEEK ON SHINING VIRTUE ANGELIC HEART!!!

Ida is looking forward to the first lacrosse match of the season. However, her teammate's fatigue proves just the thing for Avaritia Wolf to create a powerful new Resinner! And, what's this?! Just as the Angelic Saints think they have the upper hand against Avaritia Wolf, a new warrior from the Abyssal Garden appears!

Tune in for Episode 16: Night-Time Terror; A New Beast takes the Stage!

Spoiler: Author's Notes

Wait, did this chapter end with C doing better than when it started!? Is that allowed in this story?

Also, great to see that they're back from the Abyssal Forest with literally zero consequences to show for it beyond a weird, not at all ominous dream.

 

[Shadell]

Breakfast proved a strange, if not unwelcome, experience. I was used to cold cereal, granola or a piece of toast, not hot eggs and home cooked bacon, courtesy of Mr. Brandt. I was familiar with Inessa's parents, and the odd way they seemed so eager to make sure I was happy and well looked after; but the kidnapping had driven their habitual fussing to a fever pitch.

"Are you sure you're alright? Honestly, I have no clue how the school board can think this state of affairs is okay," Mrs. Brandt was the breadwinner of the family, a no-nonsense lawyer who shared her daughter's cute looks and inner fire. She had a temper Inessa lacked, and was more than willing to start a fight with anyone standing against her family's best interests.

"It is a bit much," Mr. Brandt admitted, adjusting his glasses. My dad looked down on him for being a house husband but I'd always found him reassuring, a softer gentler balance to his wife's eagerness to leap headfirst into every noble cause. He was a little chubby, with a pleasant smile and an interest in cooking and gardening that everyone in the family enjoyed immensely.

"Anyway," he continued, looking to me, "Emma and I were talking and, well, Charlie…" he hesitated, unsure of what to say.

His wife intervened, "If you ever need a place to stay, our house is your house for as long as you need it, no questions asked. Honestly, you're wasted on that…"

"Emma," he cut her off, seeing my expression sour. She crossed her arms and gave him a look that would have had me running away, but she also leaned back a little and allowed him to talk. "What we mean is that you'll always have a place here. We don't know everything you're dealing with, and you don't need to feel pressured to talk about anything that you'd rather avoid as long as..."

"My dad's not," I wanted to cry or thank them or tell them this was one of the nicest things anyone had offered me. Instead I hid behind my canned lines, "he's never hurt me or anything like that. He's just… He's not doing great with mom leaving. And, I mean, I really appreciate the offer, really and I'll remember it if I ever need help, but, monster attacks aside, I'm doing fine."

Mrs. Brandt gently placed her hand over her husband's, squeezing it comfortingly, "Just remember we're in your corner if you need us, okay?"

"I," I froze, "I have to go home to change and get ready for school. I really can't afford to miss any more class!" I stood up, leaving my half-finished breakfast and made my way to the door. Neither Inessa's parents, nor Inessa, tried to stop me.

I stopped with the door open, "Thanks. Really, thanks."

I couldn't bring myself to wait for anyone to respond.

Inessa's house was only a few doors down from mine. That was half of what had led to us becoming friends in the first place after all. So it wasn't too terrible to drag my sore body down the street and quietly sneak inside. Dad often slept in if he didn't have work early, and I didn't want to risk waking him.

Fortunately it wasn't that hard to dash upstairs, throw some water on my face and swap into clean clothes in time to meet up with an overprotective Inessa and walk to school. A part of me wanted to stay home, but I really couldn't afford to.

And, honestly, defaulting to my routine anxieties felt almost comfortable. They made it easier to not think about how close I'd come to becoming a monster or how Inessa now knew I knew and that my relationship with her group of friends would have to change or how I could have died or how much Mr. Noir had made me trust him before he betrayed me or how I still didn't know what I wanted or…

Besides, while my captivity had felt like it stretched on for ages, Inessa and the others had, apparently, rescued me in a handful of hours. The only school I'd actually missed this time was from running away at lunch.

I froze as we crossed the gates, and a few lingering students immediately started whispering with each other and staring pointedly at us. At me.

"I-Inessa?" I asked nervously, "How much of what happened yesterday do you think got out?" On second thought, some normal anxieties were worse than the monsters.

She laughed awkwardly, her expression mirroring my own dawning horror, "I went after you as soon as the vice principal stopped yelling at Temperance… But, uh, a lot of people noticed your meltdown."

I winced, "On second thought, I think I'm feeling too sick to attend today after all! Horrible things, monster attacks! Trauma!"

I spun around to run only to practically crash face first into Lupin Noir. If my sudden (accidental) attempt to headbutt her caught Lupin by surprise, she didn't show it at all, slipping effortlessly around me and even offering me a hand to help me catch my own balance.

"Good morning C!" she said as if seeing me was the high point of her day.

"Eh!" Inessa looked torn between shock at this interaction and a panicked desire to hide from her crush.

"G-good morning?" I offered back, "You seem oddly friendly today. Trying to ply us for information about yesterday?"

"Nah, basically everyone heard all about that, at least looking at the school group chats, so it isn't really news. Besides I wouldn't gossip about a co-conspirator like that!"

"EH!" Inessa glanced between Lupin and me, utterly confused by this development.

"Co-conspirator?" I tried.

"Exactly!" she mimed shooting me with finger guns before flashing a thumbs up, "that's right, gotta keep that all on the DL at school, don't we," she paused and glanced toward Inessa.

"EHHHH!" Inessa obliged.

"I really have no idea what you're talking about."

Lupin waved my objections away, "Anyway this thing she's doing is kinda adorable. Can I keep her?"

"kpdoajfs;-ga," said Inessa.

I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. I didn't object to Lupin being friendly, and it was good to see she'd gotten over whatever had had her upset the other day, but I did not need Lupin randomly deciding she was my best friend for no reason on top of everything else.

"We've talked, like, once! Why are you acting like you're my best friend now?"

"Ooh, bestie!" I was sure, on some level, that she was doing this to be as annoying as possible, but she did seem bizarrely self-satisfied with the bit, "and we've definitely talked at least twice and they were both good conversations! Did I break her?" Lupin flounced toward Inessa, who responded by doubling down on her statue impression. Lupin placed her hand on the other girl's forehead. Lovely, Inessa would be freaking out about this for days.

"No sign of a fever," Lupin had to know exactly what she was doing, "Anyway," she spun from Inessa to face me again, "we should totally hang out soon! So be a good girl and don't get in any more trouble at school. You got that?"

With a casual flip of her hand, Hurricane Lupin departed toward first period. She did not wait for a response. I shook my head and began the process of moving a near catatonic Inessa to her locker as she tried unsuccessfully to ask me what had just happened.

At least the distraction helped insulate me from the stares and whispers I was getting. For all she was more than a little incomprehensible, Lupin seemed nice enough, and if she'd been trying some weird seventh-dimensional chess play to distract me from my ongoing social demise, it was both incredibly sweet of her and had somehow mostly succeeded.

Well, at least until fourth period where I had no Inessa or Temperance or even an Ida to shield me from the gazes I was getting. I'd gone from a person who was generally known, but mostly ignored, to the center of attention. It was hell.

I hated the thought that people were looking at me, actually observing how lame and gross I was. I hadn't even showered that morning; there'd been no time after everything and I'd been so focused on avoiding dad that it hadn't felt worth more than washing my face. I tried to hide myself even deeper in my hoodie, but it didn't help. I knew that most people didn't care; that not all of our AP Psychology class' ever-present whispers were about me; but enough were that it felt like any of them might be about me. And that made the difference almost academic.

I struggled not to overhear, not to hone in on just what the rumor mill had done with my breakdown, but focusing on class was impossible. When the bell rang, I practically bolted from my seat, which couldn't have done any wonders for the state of things. At least, no one seemed to have gotten the mistaken impression that I was transgender.

I wanted to scream, to punch something, to run away from school again. But I couldn't afford to miss classes and, well, even if this was awful for me, it wasn't like anyone was really to blame here. Mr. Noir or no, what I'd said hadn't been a lie. And, while my own wants remained frustratingly incomprehensible, it wasn't as if snapping like that had been anything but my own desires made manifest.

Usually I'd have the respite of eating lunch with Inessa, but Temperance would absolutely know that and I was sure she'd try to apologize as if she'd done something wrong. And she hadn't done anything wrong. All three of them must have gone together to save me from Superbia.

But, a petty horrible little part of me still blamed her for trying to help. I told myself that I was avoiding her because I didn't know if I'd lash out or shut down or do something nasty if she tried to apologize, but I feared that deep down a dark little part of me just felt like it would be crueler to keep her waiting. And, besides, they'd all know I knew The Secret and while that had helped with Inessa, how could I know that Temperance or Ida wouldn't hold a grudge over having their identities in an outsider's hands?

Either way, I snuck into a corner of the cafeteria and ate my lunch in silence, doing my best to ignore the looks. And besides, I was tired. I wasn't up to dealing with people or with my own issues. I wasn't usually fond of naps, but it felt so much easier to simply drift through lunch.

I was able to make my escape from school before Inessa could try to walk me home and/or put Temperance in my path. I offered her an apologetic text, with a note that I was going home to rest up so she shouldn't worry, and made my escape.

Dad didn't ask about where I'd been, so I assumed the Brandt's had told him. Whatever they'd said, he was oddly subdued that afternoon. That left me free to manage texts from the Saints and reassure each of them that I was okay. Even if I was annoyed at Temperance, I wasn't going to give her the silent treatment or anything. It was always easier to talk through text than speech. There were concerns expressed that no one had seen me at lunch or in the afternoon, but I managed to convince everyone I was okay enough. With the promise of a proper debrief later in the week, I managed to escape too much recollection of yesterday's affairs.

---

I dreamt of a night that was mine to do with as I wished. I pranced through the city streets without a care, singing along to the rhythms of passing cars and the night breeze. I winked at the strange shadows that walked where people would have been were I awake and moved with a careless grace I could never achieve in a thousand years. I paused, eventually, to examine my reflection in a department store window.

Ah, so this was another magical girl dream, I realized as I offered my reflection my best attempt at a curtsy. Well, almost. The green haired girl in the mirror was far more defined than any other girl I'd dreamt of being. Her costume, aside from the matching green highlights, was as pitch black as Avaritia's. Her hair was in a ponytail, reminiscent of Inessa's aside from the color. Actually, her everything was reminiscent of Inessa. It was all just a bit smaller, a bit cuter, a bit girlier, a bit better.

Well, this made a twisted kind of sense. Avaritia'd been talking about being partners, welcoming me, not just as a childhood friend but as an equal, a piece on the board. Of course that impossible offer would find purchase deep in the soft places of my heart.

And, of course, I'd never take it in real life. I'd never even think of betraying Inessa or Temperance or Ida like this, much less hurting anyone.

But, dreams were the one place where no one could say indulging was wrong. You didn't have to think through things or be or do good in a dream. You could just be and do and no one could complain.

I struck a pose in front of another mirrored window and giggled. There was a joy there, a fluttering happiness with a faint toothy edge. Who wouldn't want to try being a wicked girl just once or twice?

I waved to a few passing shadows, jolting them out of their rhythms and sending them skittering away in shock. An instinctual part of me ached to chase them down, to pull and twist at the darkness and show them there was no reason for fear when the night could be so beautiful if they would only let it in.

Something in the far distance caught my attention before I could indulge that impulse. It wasn't quite a sound, but I hummed along anyway. It was a beautiful composition, full of crackling flames, rushing water and rumbling earth, interspersed with the sonorous howls of a wolf and I knew where the dream needed me to be. I was powerless to resist. If only a dream, at least, here I could answer the stage's clarion call.

I hopped onto a nearby streetlight, landing just heavily enough that something cracked beneath my feet. I took a moment to appreciate the feeling of just being able to let go and break things without having to work through hating myself over every little mistake.

Then I was off, bounding across the rooftops. The night sky embraced me as it would any favored child, the wind rushing past me in a cutting hug before it sent me on my way. No silly little mundane boy would ever get to appreciate this vista.

I found myself coming to a halt, a giggly euphoric mess, overlooking a fight. Inessa was already doing whatever it was she did with the strange pieces of amber that seemed to come out of defeated monsters. Temperantia was, as ever, lurking and waiting for an opening while Ida was locked in furious combat with the person whose uniform matched mine.

The wolf was fast and strong, eir growls a racing erratic tune of playful fury. Diligentia was as Steadfast as the Earth, her sound a methodical percussion line that refused to bend to Avaritia's rhythm.

As I watched, she ducked under Avaritia's fully extended claws and brought her shield above her head to deflect my wolf's follow up hammer strike. For a moment, they stayed in place, engaged in a contest of raw strength and skill as both subtly maneuvered for leverage. Avaritia shifted eir posture, adjusting her footing and throwing his whole weight into the clash. Diligentia had no need to move. The earth was her ally and the ground simply shifted to brace her better and deprive Avaritia of eir footing.

With a decisive shout, Diligentia sprung forward and up, breaking Avaritia's balance. The Diligent Saint lashed out with a knee, striking Avaritia right in the solar plexus before my poor little puppy could recover. Avaritia stumbled back to absorb the blow, only to lose her footing on debris that hadn't been so loose a moment ago.

Avaritia rolled with the fall, and ey would have made a doubtless stunning recovery! Except, of course, Temperantia had been waiting for the right moment to strike. A torrent of water slammed Avaritia into a nearby wall.

Well, this wouldn't do at all! Interfering in a duel between two people who were almost as pretty as this me was one thing, but I was clearly dreaming about being Avaritia's partner and it would be awful to let them gang up on em.

Besides, I was upset at Temperance and, while I'd never actually do anything to hurt her, this was a dream and so I could indulge in all of the pettiness! Still, I wasn't dreaming of being an evil magical girl just to make a boring entrance. This was my dream and I was going to enjoy it.

Carefully, trusting Avaritia to handle eirself for at least a few more minutes, I skirted around the edge of the fight, dropping silently behind Castitas, just as she finished whatever it was she was doing with the strange glowing piece of amber.

From there it was a simple matter to pull her into a hug. She froze and yelped and I, dutifully, shoved her away to give her a little space.

Inessa stumbled, then caught her balance and whirled on me, trying to say something, though the words came out in a garbled stream of incomprehensible dream noises, interspersed with the crackling roar of her heart's fire.

I laughed and twirled and tried to tell her something about how I got to be pretty too, how I got to have a skirt all of my own now; but the wind was rude and stole my words from me.

For whatever reason, this didn't set her at ease. Instead, Inessa tossed the strange amber into the distance, where something small and birdlike snatched it out of the air. Then she drew her bow and, with a shout, sent three arrows of fire arcing toward me.

Well that wouldn't do! This was my dream thank you very much Miss Brandt and I refused to be upstaged! Besides, yes, being pretty and wearing cute clothes were things everyone wanted deep down, but what was the point in being a magical girl if you couldn't do magic?

So I did the thing you should always do in a dream and cheated, pulling out my own bow, a dark mirror to Inessa's. It was easy to match her volley with with my own equal and opposite. Besides, while Inessa had always been genuinely cute and impressive and powerful, green fire simply looked better than red.

Each arrow met in the air, crashing into each other in beautiful bursts of red and green, and this dream probably wasn't even on Christmas.

She frowned, then shouted something and leaped backwards, regrouping into a defensive formation with Temperantia and Diligentia.

Freed from the pressure of their assault by my absurd entrance, a half-drowned wolf picked eirself up and shouted something angry in dreamspeak toward Temperantia, then, preempting Temperantia's reply, turned and waved ecstatically to me, grinning cheerfully.

Naturally, I gave my partner a curtsy and prepared to fight. Obviously I would win, this was my dream!

As we blurred into a graceful dance of fist and magic, the quiet beeping of my alarm pulled me from my slumber. The magical girl dreams had always been a guilty pleasure, but this? This had gone above and beyond in both pleasure and guilt. Sure it was a little, or maybe a lot, evil, but it had felt so impossibly vivid, like it was something I only had to reach out to touch. With dreams like that, I hated that I had to wake up at all.

And, for once, I felt rested to the point that I was basically bursting with energy. Any lingering pain in my body had vanished in the night, leaving me feeling light and springy enough that I half wanted to try roof-hopping for real. For once, I felt like I could face everyone's stares. The me in the dream wouldn't have had a problem. She got to be pretty enough and cool enough that she'd simply have taken it as her due and owned it.

Inessa, I found out on the way to school, had not had anywhere near as pleasant a night.


NEXT WEEK ON SHINING VIRTUE ANGELIC HEART!!!

Worried about the Abyssal Forest's growing power, the girls resolve to investigate the whereabouts of possible Saint candidates. They find rumors about an art prodigy known for volunteering her time teaching at a local daycare. However, before the girls can figure out if she has the talent to become Angelic Saint Patientia, Avaritia attacks!

Tune in for Episode 17: Natural Talent? The Painter's Secret Revealed!

 

[Shadell]

I had expected Inessa to grill me about Lupin, now that she'd had a full day to recover from being called adorable. Instead, she was pensive, to the point that she didn't even acknowledge it when I greeted her outside her door.

"Something wrong?" I asked, doing my best to moderate my good mood for her sake.

Inessa startled and looked up at me. "Oh, hey C! It's, like, umm, so Ida has a rival who she was finally ready to beat at Lacrosse and they were gearing up for a big match and she thought her team would win, but then…"

I gave her a look. She blushed.

"Oh right, I don't have to do that anymore!" Inessa smiled at that, then glanced around to make sure no one was in ear's reach. "So, uh, we were fighting Avaritia last night, after she turned one of Ida's teammates into a Resinner and it seemed like we were finally going to beat her, but…"

"A Resinner?" The unfamiliar word sounded odd on the tongue.

"The monsters we fight. They're called that because their sinful emotions are crystallized into amber with the sap from the Abyssal Forest so that…. Look we can explain this later, that's not the important part!"

"D-did you come up with that or do they go around calling themselves that, cause it sounds pretty silly for the things that routinely threaten to murder like half the town."

"Michael's name for them," she sighed impatiently.

"Oh right, you've been talking about him for months. Who's Michael?" I asked despite myself.

"M-MONTHS?!" Inessa stared at me in shock. I bobbed my head up and down. She slumped in shame. "The one who gave us our powers. She looks like a cute plushie and claims to be the archangel Michael; but, can we get back to the important part?"

I froze, "S-so, like, you're telling me Christianity is right but also has magical girls and angels that are plushies?"

Inessa frowned at that, "I guess? I dunno, I think it's kinda different! Anyway, back to the new girl!"

"Oh right!" I cut in. Inessa's worries mattered, but the revelation that Michael was a girl had made me remember something important. "Avaritia said ey like Spivak pronouns, which I had to look up, but I think that means ey use ey/em, so we should be careful when we talk about em."

Inessa's eyes widened, "She-ey is an enbie?! Oh no, is this why ey keeps fighting against us? We've been misgendering em this whole time…."

I shook my head, "I don't think ey's the type to get angry about that, they did say that basically anything is okay with em, they just kinda liked Spivak more maybe? Ey was being very confusing at the time."

Inessa sighed in relief, "that's good. I was really worried that's why we couldn't ever manage to talk to em. Anywa…"

I cut her off with perfectly irritating timing, "Anyway, who is this new girl?!"

She rapped her knuckles on my forehead, "I'd get there if you stopped interrupting!"

I smiled back at her, glad that, worldview shattering revelations or not, that seemed to have picked up her mood a bit.

"ANYWAY," she said with a mock glare, "So, we finally seemed to have Avaritia on the defensive and I thought we'd be able to…"

"Kill em?"

"TALK to em, honestly C, we're not killers!"

I wondered. Avaritia had said Gula was gone, but I couldn't imagine Inessa doing that. I bowed my head in an apology, "Sorry. Anyway, you were going to talk to her and…"

"Finally ask why sh-ey keeps doing this all on eir own, why ey sticks with Superbia even after Gula…" Inessa shuddered at Superbia's name and I realized that my rescue had probably been a greater adventure than I knew, "or why ey keeps turning people into monsters and if we can find any way to find a middle ground or talk em down.

I frowned at that, I wanted to say that some people were just evil. If Inessa had been talking about Mr. Noir, I would have had little trouble with that. But, Avaritia Wolf had been—once ey decided I wasn't a creep—almost nice? Ey definitely hadn't felt like a monster. I thought back to my dream; did a part of me actually like em or something? Is that why I was fantasizing about working with em? Or was I just so desperate to claim any shred of agency, that a part of me would have been content to join the fray as a villain?

"R-right," I offered, in lieu of trying to navigate those feelings.

"And then, as soon as we had her on the back foot we got ambushed by, well, she didn't name herself, but she definitely looked like a new Beast."

"What's a 'Beast'?" I wondered, thankful for the information but worried that I'd never manage to keep track of it all.

"Oh," Inessa nodded, "Those are their leaders like Avaritia and Gula and Superbia."

"So new…. Snake? Worm? Possum? Manatee?"

Inessa shook her head, "Just a girl. At first she was almost, well it was dark already, so it was hard to see, but it was like she didn't have any features at all, but then she bit me and the miasma cleared and she looked just like an evil me!"

"An evil general you don't want to pet and/or date…." I said with mock solemnity, ignoring a spike of anxiety. I worried that my dream had so neatly matched the timing of a new enemy, I hadn't bitten Inessa; it was just a dream.

"Abyssal Beast," Inessa corrected absently, "And right, it's weird! Well, Superbia Dragon too! But that's because he's a guy and also he started monologuing about, like, a lot of weird stuff when he tried to stop us from rescuing you."

"And you're upset that you lost the chance to talk to Avaritia?" I offered, steering things back on track.

Inessa nodded, then shook her head, "Well, sorta? It sucks that we lost the chance to at least try to understand em, but… the new girl seemed, well, off?"

"Off?" I asked. "What about her?"

Inessa stopped and thought, tapping her foot against the concrete sidewalk. "Like, sad maybe? Anxious?"

"Sad. She tried to kill you and you're worried she was sad?"

Inessa blushed, "It's like… Well, Michael said that she looked so foggy because she wasn't fully an Abyssal Beast yet and so there might be time to, uh, stop her from going all the way? But, also…"

I frowned, thinking back to what little I'd known about the Abyssal Forest, "Well, I think Avaritia mentioned that people need strong sin to become Abyssal Beasts? So she is, uh…" I should probably have memorized all the sins and virtues, this being a major recurring threat to my life, but it wasn't like there was an obvious connection between basketball themed monsters and greed.

"She's not greed, pride or gluttony, right?" I ran through the list of slots that were already filled. Inessa nodded.

"And, umm, Superbia tried to make me lust so they probably didn't find another one in like a day." It only made sense that Superbia's plan would target multiple students. There was no way he'd go to all that effort for a chance at one.

Inessa broke into giggles.

"What?" I asked.

"They tried to make YOU into lust? That's like your exact opposite." she snorted as if this was a hilarious joke and not a legitimate source of existential dread.

"Anyway," it was my turn to cut her off before she could cut me any deeper. "That leaves wrath, envy or sloth, so… figure out what she's so mad, jealous and or apathetic about and you can maybe help her get over it?"

Inessa nodded at that, "It's nice being able to talk to you about these things without having to hide," she said as if she meant it.

"Just, please don't put figuring her out above your own safety. She's an enemy, and if you got hurt or…" I trailed off, unable to deal with the sudden onset of anxiety about Inessa and co's heroics.

Inessa wrapped me into a brief hug, "It's okay, I'm not going to risk anyone's life just to talk to to her, but..." she frowned, "But, is it really okay to want to try to make friends with someone evil? I mean, if she's giving herself to sin so much that she can become a monster…"

I frowned, "I guess… it depends why? Is she jealous because she's shallow and vain and wants all the rewards other people get without putting in any work or is it, like, she's angry at injustice or cops or the environment or something or she's being bullied and just wants it to stop or…"

Inessa thought it over for a moment, then smiled, "Right! And I can just decide after I know. Thanks C! You always give the best advice."

I smiled at that, though I hadn't said anything remotely insightful really. Sometimes you just needed to hear things you already knew from other people to really believe it.

Still, between the dream and getting to be a tiny bit useful, it would take something truly awful to get me down. For instance, if I happened to be a central target of the school's neverending gossip mill, stuck being trapped in everyone's line of sight. I sighed, hopefully it would blow over soon.

---

As it happened, in second period, the principal came on the PA to announce the sudden disappearance of our school guidance counselor. Not only did that mean that the Abyssal Beast hiding in our school was definitely gone and at least 30% less likely to kidnap me (at school); but, also, well, mysterious disappearance trumped weird breakdown any day of the week.

Oh sure, I still caught the occasional glance or whisper, but it was a low buzz rather than a constant roar.

So my good mood sustained itself until lunchtime, with only the minor pitfall that I was a bit worried about Lupin. Her uncle had been evil and also had probably vanished. Worse, I hadn't seen her that morning, and that left me a little worried. What if her uncle had done something to her?! Still, she'd been to school the day before, and it wasn't like we interacted that much, so I wasn't worrying too much just yet.

Instead, I set myself on a much more immediate problem as I moved toward Inessa's usual place in the cafeteria: Temperance.

Inessa cheerfully waved me down as I approached. Ida looked up briefly from her loaded tray of food to wave casually; but she didn't put down her fork and went right back to eating. Temperance, however, froze and stared at me in silence until I'd taken my seat.

"C," she greeted me without a trace of emotion, "I'm sorry."

I bit back my initial impulse to run away and took a deep breath. Honestly, getting to beat her up a bit in my dreams had done a lot to better my mood about Temperance. If anything, I felt a little guilty that some part of me would take joy in violence against her, even if only in a dream.

"It's fine," I smiled, "You were just trying to help, you didn't do anything wrong."

"I should have…" she paused, taking effort to form her words carefully, "I should have attempted to approach you somewhere more private to have that conversation and taken more care."

I didn't meet her gaze, "really, it was Mr. Noir who had me all messed up, you were just trying to help and, like, even if I'm not actually a transgender, it wasn't malicious."

For some reason, no one responded for a prolonged moment. "W-what, what's wrong?" I asked, worried that I'd somehow offended everyone.

"What does Mr. Noir have to do with anything?" Ida asked, worry clear in her voice.

"He's got the whole evil dragon thing going? You fought Superbia right? You must have noticed they're the same person!"

The trio exchanged a quick series of looks. Finally, it was Inessa who spoke. "Umm, you can't recognize people if you don't know who they are already," she clarified. "It's not, like, exact or anything, but unless we saw him name himself or give us proof of his identity or had some strong clue besides his appearance, we probably wouldn't have been able to recognize him."

Oh. Oh no. I hadn't said anything and now Mr. Noir had probably managed to hide any clues about his plans. Sure, the Saints hadn't insisted on any kind of debriefing or anything and I hadn't known about the magic hiding everyone's identities, but at the end of the day, those were excuses and one of the few good things dad had drilled into my head was not to avoid taking responsibility for my mistakes. I could have figured out that there was something magic behind no one recognizing the Saints. I could have said something to Inessa or not gotten so wrapped up in running away from Temperance that I'd avoided them for a day or…

"C!" Inessa grabbed my shoulder and shook me out of my own thoughts, "Ida and I are going to go try to snoop out Mr. Noir's office to see if he left any clues. It'll be okay, we won't let him get to you so just, umm, stay here with Temperance and talk things out, okay?"

I frowned. Sure a lot of my petulant emotions at Temperance had dissipated but I still wasn't sure of talking to her alone without Ida or Inessa to help mediate. It also felt too much like running away to let someone else go back to that smokey room.

"It'll be okay," Inessa said comfortingly. "Don't worry about anything, we'll make sure you're safe."

I needed to see it, to make sure that none of my confessions lingered in the air, that the smell of cinnamon and copper was gone and wouldn't come back. But it wasn't like I would really be any help or anything. And, besides, I'd already messed things up enough with not telling them about Mr. Noir that I couldn't really make them protect me from any traps in good conscience.

"Sorry," I said at last. "I should have thought to tell you."

Ida gave me an odd look before Inessa grabbed her by the hand and pulled her away. And then it was but me and Temperance with no one at the table.

We sat in awkward silence for a good few minutes as Temperance finished her lunch. "So," she said at length, "are you okay?"

"I'm fine," I snapped, utterly failing to land on a tone that indicated fineness.

Temperance nodded, declining to point out the obvious, "they'll be okay, they know what they're doing."

I mimicked the gesture, and we returned to what seemed half an eternity of agonizing silence.

"If you're not trans," Temperance said finally, "then I guess you want me to stop with all the jokes about getting you in a skirt."

I practically sagged with relief that at least we were no longer simply staring at each other, but I hesitated to respond. Sure it would be nice if she stopped joking about shoving me in a skirt all the time, but I didn't want everyone to treat me differently because I'd been attacked and was too useless to do anything but pass out. The thought of telling Temperance to stop sent an unpleasant surge of nausea through my gut.

"Nah," I said, playing it cool, "it's fine. I don't actually mind, and they're just jokes."

"In that case," Temperance said, smiling, "since you know our secret, I suppose it's time for you to join team magical girl? You could go part time on the girl bit if needed."

"Haha, if only," I laughed it off, fighting the urge to run away.

Temperance gave me another of her odd looks and we passed the remainder of lunch in a marginally less awkward silence.

---

Fifth period brought a flurry of texts from Ida confirming that no signs of Mr. Noir remained. With that settled, the girls quickly agreed to meet after school to go over things more properly.

The group sans Ida—she had Lacrosse practice—made our way to an empty classroom. Inessa and Temperance wasted no time in setting out a number of textbooks. The plan was to pretend to be studying if anyone poked their head in. Teachers, Inessa explained as she ruffled through her bag, mostly wouldn't object if you stayed a few hours to study while you waited for a friend.

Finally Inessa pulled out a small angel plushie, perhaps six inches tall, and placed it on a desk next to our books.

"Allow me to introduce Michael!" she said with a flourish. The plushie tilted its head to the side, then nodded at me.

"Greetings mortal," it—she—said with an imperious tone entirely at odds with her mildly squished exterior.

Her hair was long and golden, though made out of a thick yarn-like fabric. Her halo, a golden ring that looked far tackier than the Saints' was visibly attached to her head with a pipe cleaner, and her hands had no distinct fingers beyond those that seemed to be drawn on in sharpie. Her eyes were shockingly deep red gems and her wings, for all they seemed to be made of cloth and fluff, fluttered with a decidedly lifelike grace.

"Umm, hi?" I stared awkwardly for a few moments, struggling to find the words to ask a sapient plushie that was allegedly an archangel, "Inessa just keeps you in her backpack all day?"

The plushie nodded, "It matters little where this vessel rests. Though," Michael glanced at Inessa, "It would be preferable were I not to be crushed by textbooks."

"Inessa!" I couldn't believe she would do that to a poor innocent plushie.

"Umm, oops." Inessa bopped herself on the head, "Sorry about that."

"Your consideration is appreciated," said the angel, "but truly it is we who owe you an apology for causing you to get caught up in this conflict."

"That's," I hesitated, "I should be the ones thanking you for saving me all the time. You're the ones that…" I wasn't sure what to say. I simply owed them too much.

Temperance ignored us both, instead chomping down loudly on an apple slice. I glanced at her, grateful for the distraction, only to blink twice at the oddly impressive array of chips, crackers and sliced cheese she'd set out.

"Mine," she said. Then she tilted her head to the side, "Though I could be coerced into sharing under certain terms."

"I'm not going to wear a skirt."

She shrugged, as if to say that this didn't matter and my surrender was inevitable. It felt like a return to the status quo, however fragile. For that I was glad.

"I swear Temperance," Inessa pouted at the girl, then shook her head. "Anyway, Ida's at practice, so I figured we should save you explaining your side of what happened and let you ask any questions you have for us until she gets here."

I nodded, "So, I guess what's this all about? Why does the Abyssal Forest keep turning people into monsters and where do they come from?" I trusted Inessa and the others with my life. But, Avaritia Wolf had seemed to believe in eir cause. And Gula Shark was missing.

Michael fluttered up above the table, "Allow me to explain. The Abyssal Forest seeks to use the power of sin to strengthen the sin within human hearts and, in turn, darken the First Tree's nature until sin ascends over virtue."

She settled down, as if that explanation was sufficient or, well, made any sense at all. Behind her, Inessa took advantage of the moment to steal a few of Temperance's crackers. Temperance graciously ignored the theft.

"So, what's the First Tree?"

Michael hesitated, "The First Tree guards the power of both sin and virtue and taught both to the humans who sheltered under its branches. It is connected to the feelings deep in everyone's hearts, though only a rare few can awaken the powers of their emotions. By corrupting it, the Abyssal Forest would strengthen the power of sin while weakening virtue and sway humanity toward evil."

I nodded at that. That more or less made sense. "And they make Resinners to do that?"

Inessa answered, speaking around a bite of cracker, "Right! The beasts infuse the sap of the First Tree that's been poisoned with sin into people and, when their sins go out of control, it crystallizes and they turn into Resinners."

"And defeating them, what, saves the victims? Makes it so you can stop it from influencing the First Tree?"

Inessa nodded, "We can purify their Heart Amber which lets them turn back and, yeah, that stops it from influencing the First Tree."

"That's good," I said awkwardly as if 'good' was a useful descriptor for preventing humanity from being overcome by sin.

There were probably a hundred other things to ask. But there was only one that burned its way through the back of my skull. I opened my mouth, only to realize that my tongue had grown impossibly heavy. I stuttered awkwardly and buried my head in my hands.

"What's up C?" Inessa stood up to pat me gently on the back.

I took a few deep breaths, steadying myself.

"I was just wondering," I started awkwardly, trailing into a long silence.

"Wondering?" Michael asked, tilting her head to the side.

"That's, umm, if…" I glanced around for any help. But I'd started and I could hardly run from it now.

"Take your time." Temperance's eyes met mine and she offered me an encouraging smile. Of course she would know what I wanted to ask. Of course that would make the words even harder to find.

I took a deep breath and held it for several seconds, doing my best not to think about what anyone might say. It was a dumb impulse. Nothing would come of it. I didn't have it in me to shine like any of them. I remembered how good the dream felt and I had to try.

"I was just wondering if-"

The door swung open abruptly, startling all of us. Michael flopped into my arms, pretending to be an ordinary doll.

"Hi guys!" a tired but upbeat Ida greeted us, drawing a sigh from Temperance and a warm hello from Inessa.

She shut the door behind her and made her way to an empty desk.

"Finish explaining things to C?" she asked curiously.

"Almost," Temperance informed her with mildly more frost than usual, "they were just about to ask a question."

"Right, what's up?"

I froze.

"I was just, umm," I was hyperventilating, "wondering if I could, like, help you all or something? I mean, like, obviously I'm no good against monsters, but if there's anything I could do that would help you out with planning or covering for you or anything…"

Temperance gave me a quiet thumbs up and Inessa wrapped me in a hug, "That's a great idea C!"

"I don't think it's a good idea to get people wrapped up in this." Ida seemed the lone hesitant voice, "We get exposed to a lot of danger and C wouldn't be able to protect himself if he got attacked even more. Like, it's already bad and this would just put him at even more risk. Besides, this is our responsibility, and it would be wrong to…"

She looked at me, and the words died on her tongue. It wasn't like she was wrong though, even if she was the only one direct enough to point out how useless I was.

"I-it's not that I don't think you're great! Look, we all like you C; we trust you or we'd be freaking out a lot more about you knowing our identities." I wanted to say that she couldn't trust me that much, or she'd let me help, but she wasn't wrong about how little I'd probably just get in the way. "But this is our responsibility. We're supposed to handle it, not, like, throw the work on bystanders when we're already letting them down."

I nodded. That was probably what all of them thought really, and, as ways of letting me down, it was gentle enough.

"Okay, so couldn't they join as a magical girl?" Temperance said, voicing the actual question I hadn't dared ask. I obviously wasn't worthy. But, while it had gone unsaid, there was always the possibility that I might have been. And now I would get an answer, and really there could only be one answer and the knowledge would only hurt. At the same time, it was nice to imagine that Temperance, however mistaken, might look at me and see someone who could stand with her. And, even if I knew it would only end in pain, because I wasn't good enough, a part of me remembered how free I had felt with the night winds at my back and hoped anyway.

"That's a great idea! Honestly, we really should be trying to recruit the other Saints if we want to win this, and C would be totally amazing as a teammate." Inessa leapt on Temperance's suggestion with immediate enthusiasm.

Michael stared at me. Deeply, I looked into the gemstones that served as her eyes and I saw, if only for a moment, what struck me as an unfathomably ancient kindness carrying wisdom I would never fully understand.

Then the moment passed.

"I'm sorry," Michael looked away first.

"Oh," I said, struggling to smile. If I didn't look hurt, no one was allowed to feel bad and it was silly to have wanted in the first place.

"Your desire to help is true, and you have the potential, but.." the angel considered me for a long moment as if deciding whether to say something, "you are not qualified."

I forced a laugh; though I was the only one to react that way. I wanted to run and hide and find somewhere to not cry—boys don't do that and it would have been ridiculous to cry about not getting to be a magical hero of which there were only a few exceptional people. Besides, the last time I'd run away from a well-meaning friend, it had ended pretty badly and it had barely been a few days since then. I couldn't be that pathetic, could I?

"No, that makes total sense," I said as blasély as I could. Ida grimaced and even Temperance looked a bit taken aback. "Sorry, I guess helping was a bit of a silly idea, huh? Let's just pretend I didn't say anything. It'd just get me kidnapped again immediately anyway."

Inessa shot Ida a glare and gave my arm a comforting squeeze, "No, Ida's the one being silly here! Honestly, we barely have the time to think half the time, and having another friend to help, however they can, would be great!"

"A-anyway," I realized I was dragging the nails of one hand across my other arm and forced myself to stop, "About the kidnapping. Avaritia dragged me into this strange palace area and then Mr. Noir was there and he turned into a dragon. I think he had some kind of brainwashing incense that…"

I wasn't sure what to say. I was obviously rushing through the actual point of the meeting, but I just needed to escape.

"It made me trust him and believe him when he said a bunch of lies about me," I could spare my pride that much deception.

The girls allowed me to speak without interrupting, except for the odd clarifying question. No one complained about how fast I was talking, or how unclearly. I'd ruined whatever cheerful mood the meeting had, and they must have been as eager to escape the agonizing awkwardness as I was.

"And that's about it, I woke up in Inessa's bed," I finished, letting out a sigh of relief.

"I can't think of any big questions, but, umm, like, did you notice anything about the new Beast? Or have you noticed any aftereffects from whatever they've done to you?"

I thought of my dream. The details didn't match. It had to be a coincidence. Even if I told them, it would only hurt more, and it wouldn't matter.

"I've been a bit sore all over," I admitted, "But that's about it."

Inessa and Ida, at least, seemed relieved at that. Michael did not respond visibly and Temperance looked unusually pensive. Perhaps she felt guilty about asking the question on my behalf.

And then, finally, we said our goodbyes. Inessa shoved Michael awkwardly back into her backpack and the girls filtered out of the classroom.

I lingered a little, gathering myself as I stared out at the football field through the window.

"C," Ida's voice cut into my musing. I didn't turn.

"I just wanted to apologize, I didn't… I wasn't that clear earlier, and I thought you should know that, umm," she hesitated. I didn't want to hear whatever it was she'd try to say to comfort me. A part of me wanted to yell at her to leave. But she hadn't done anything wrong.

"Michael said something similar to me when I first asked." Ida let the words sit just long enough for me to put the meaning together, "About being a magical girl that is."

Oh.

"Thanks," I managed. I didn't turn around. It wasn't like I was crying or anything, January's last sunset was just so oddly bittersweet.

----

And things continued like that for the next few days: awkward lunches and desperate attempts to return to normality. Apparently Michael was 'reluctant' to have a normal person in any possible danger, and she was 'considering' how I could be of help without risking myself. As a way of letting me down gently, it wasn't bad; but that ended my only real possibility of being able to help.

Only in my dreams could I really cut loose, taking out my own feelings of inadequacy on phantasms of my friends. There I wasn't inferior to Inessa's enthusiastic passion or Diligentia's endless focus, but rather someone who could actually take the stage with them. And sure, I didn't like fighting my friends, but these were only dreams. No matter that they often happened around the same time as monster attacks. The details were never right. That meant they were only dreams. And besides, I needed at least that much hope.

Of course, there were two changes in the real world that weren't so bad. Firstly, Lupin was both surprisingly fine after her uncle's disappearance. She also didn't stop attempting to act like we'd suddenly become close friends, which was oddly nice. If nothing else, it was amazing to watch her casually offered greetings drive Inessa to madness.

Her friendship was definitely unique. For one, she'd started giving me odd little gifts. One morning, she brought me a set of watercolor paints. A few days later she dropped a burnt tennis ball into my hands. I had no idea what drove the odd array of nick-knacks she shoved on me as "mementos." She refused to offer more than a toothy grin by way of explanation. On the other hand, these made Inessa insanely jealous, and, while it wasn't a nice thought, something about her looking at me with that kind of agonized want was just oddly invigorating.

I'd worked up the courage to ask Lupin if her uncle was okay; but she'd insisted he was fine, simply "away on a trip" and that he'd mentioned "his work at the school was finished for the moment." I took that to mean that he had simply decided to cut his losses at the school after recruiting the new Beast and failing to get me despite his best efforts.

The other good thing was that I didn't manage to end up trapped in the vicinity of a single monster attack for over a week and a half after my kidnapping. Perhaps whatever Avaritia had tried doing to me had removed that trait that called monsters to me; perhaps not. Either way, I had yet to encounter the mysterious new Beast even once. I knew it wouldn't last, but it was amazing to get to attend an entire week of school. For the first time in senior year I actually felt like I was caught up in my classes.

And that suited me fine. I'd never join the magical girls, and it was obviously clear that I couldn't even help them in little ways, beyond being their friend. But I could dream and I could live an ordinary life where I got to do nice ordinary things and stop burdening my friends all the time, and it would have been greedy to want any more than that. Even dad found little reason to yell at me over the next week.

And then, in the early morning of Friday, February 9th, a little under two weeks after my kidnapping, I received a single call from Ida. The voice on the other end was too childish and too desperate to be hers. Whoever it was made no greeting, nor did she offer anything more than a single cry for help before the line went dead.


NEXT WEEK ON SHINING VIRTUE ANGELIC HEART!!!

A fight against the latest Resinner leaves Castitas and Temperantia out of commission, with Diligentia alone to pick up the slack. Can even Ida's endless persistence survive with the weight of the world on her shoulders, or will the Saint of Diligence collapse under the pressure?

Tune in for Episode 18: Rewind! Even Ida Needs Breaks?!

Spoiler: AN/Belated April Fools

Michael glanced at me and, as I looked into the gemstones that served as her eyes and I saw, if only for a moment, what struck me as an unfathomably ancient kindness carrying wisdom I would never comprehend.

Then the moment passed and Michael spoke.

"The First Tree received a large number of high quality applicants for magical girls. As in seasons past, we were limited in the number of applicants that could be accepted, though we make every effort to accommodate as many candidates as possible. Each application was carefully reviewed by the division or mascot to which it was submitted.

Unfortunately, the First Tree was not able to accept your application at this time. For more information, you may now obtain the reviews for your submission by accessing the submission site on the First Tree homepage, using the same login as you did with your original submission. Please review those comments for feedback and contact the program chair for the unit only after reviewing the information there, if you have further questions. Please note that we do not entertain appeals for acceptance, and reading your reviewer feedback is meant only as a way of improving your work. If there is anything amiss about your reviews, please alert the chair of the applicable unit."

Click to shrink...

I'd like to thank my beta readers, @NemoMarx and especially @Chehrazad for a lot of help with this chapter!

I'd also like to thank @Gargulec for a lot of good discussion about writing process and help workshopping some elements of tone and pacing that I've been struggling with. Garg just started posting a novel of her own. If you're in the market for something that's EXTREMELY NSFW, she's an amazing writer who incorporates a lot of interesting elements of transfeminist theory into her work. The Boy-Toy Wife looks to be a smutty murder mystery interrogating colonial politics and competing notions of gender and I'm personally very stoked for it!

 

[Shadell]

"Hi!" the voice in the speaker said. "This is Ida! If you are hearing this, I can't-"

I killed the connection, then dialed another number. Neither Temperance nor Ida answered. I drummed my fingers against the back of my other hand. I wanted to shout and pace and work out the thoughts physically until I was calm enough to know what to do. But the last thing I needed was to disturb dad and have to deal with his complaints instead of whatever crisis had reduced someone to begging me for help.

Instead, I took a deep breath. It was probably nothing that serious. No one would call me for help with an attacking monster. But, someone had called me and I couldn't just do nothing.

Okay, it was nowhere near time for classes to start and, as far as I knew, none of the sports teams had morning practice. That meant Ida would most likely have been at her home if something had happened. I saw no signs of a waiting Inessa as I slipped out of the house. It was a bit early for her, but, still one more piece of evidence to point toward something being wrong.

The walk toward Ida's house was agonizing. I wanted to sprint, but arriving without any stamina left wouldn't have helped anyone. So I alternated between jogging and power walking, worrying and wishing I owned at least a bike all the while.

I couldn't help but count the minutes. It took 19 of them to find myself, tired but functional, pawing at the fancy digital intercom at the entrance to Ida's building. Though the red brick facade spoke of age, the system was brand new and well-taken care of. Those were the perks of living this close to the city center, a fair trade for how cramped the apartment must be when shared between three people.

Eventually, after I had half resolved to start buzzing Ida's neighbors one by one, the intercom crackled to life and Ida's voice, more exhausted than I could recall hearing her, came through.

"Yes?" she said. I sighed in relief. She was alive and he didn't sound like she was in any great misery or fear.

"T-this is C. You called and asked for help?" the voice hadn't quite sounded like Ida, but it had been her phone.

Ida cursed, and the intercom went quiet for a moment before coming back, "It's fine C! Sorry to bother you, but things are going…." a muffled voice cut Ida off. This was followed by an exchange of words I couldn't understand.

Finally, Ida responded again, "Okay, things are fine," she said, refusing to concede to the other speaker, "but you can come on up if you really want to help. You don't need to though. I got this," she said, her voice quivering faintly with the desperation of someone who absolutely did not have whatever this was.

I slipped into the elevator and waited to be lifted to Ida's fifth floor apartment. I'd only seen it once or twice, but it wasn't hard to recall the details. Ida lived in a sleek modern two bedroom with hardwood pergo floors. Her mother had it decorated with an array of treasured tchotchkes, the artsy white-with-black print interrupted by Ida's brother's scattered toys. Floating above it all: the heavy smell of scented candles filling the air. I shivered, hoping that none would be cinnamon.

At least that's how it usually looked. When I opened the door, I instead found myself confronted with a number of fragments of what had previously been Ida's mom's Rae Dunn obsession. Amongst the rubble, there was Ida, or rather Angelic Saint Diligentia. For once, she didn't look all that angelic. Dirt and grass stains marked her skirt and large chunks of ribbon were missing from her top. She looked at me with bloodshot eyes, struggling to comprehend my presence for all that we had just talked.

"Hi… Diligentia?" I offered tentatively.

Ida seemed worried for a second, then glanced down at herself, "Oh, huh, forgot to change back with everything going on." She made no move to detransform.

"Everything?"

"Well," whatever Ida had been about to say got cut off by a small redheaded blur dashing in my direction before circling around me cowering behind my leg.

"C!" It chirped with a quiet urgency, "tell Temperance to stop biting me!"

"Diligentia," I asked, as I reflexively patted the small child's head, "Why is Inessa more of a child than usual?"

Ida sighed, "This new Beast's Resinners are all… well, nothing will ever be as bad as Fidget Spinner, but they're all weird!" Even as tired as she clearly was, Ida paused momentarily to shake the lingering trauma out of her thoughts. "Look, everything's okay, so you don't need to worry about it. As soon as I defeat the monster, they should go back to normal."

She wobbled a little unsteadily, thrown off balance via glancing contact from a blue haired child's approach. No larger than Ida, with her hair cut much shorter than I remembered and a pair of boyish overalls, this version of Temperance sported a worrisomely savage grin full of pointy teeth. One hand was clutched around what seemed to be Michael trying desperately to escape.

"Hiya big sis!" she said, beaming at me with youthful malice. "I'll let go of Michael if you give me back Inessa!"

Both Inessa and the plushie froze in quiet terror until Ida plucked Michael straight from Temperance's grasp and did her best to brush off the plushie. Michael wasted no time in taking higher to the air, well out of Temperance's reach.

"Hello Charlie," Michael's voice was particularly squeaky this morning and she seemed to have a bit of drool on her leg, greatly undercutting any gravitas the flying plushie might have managed.

"Hi Michael, did you call me?" I hadn't recognized the voice on the phone, but Michael seemed the most likely suspect.

She shook her head, circling around me slowly, examining, "No, loathe as I am to involve a mere mortal in our conflict, I declined to disturb you no matter the exigency of the situation. I believe Inessa stole Ida's phone."

Inessa nodded triumphantly, "I'm kinda mixed up," she admitted, "but I can mostly remember!"

"I have it under control," Ida interjected stubbornly. Inessa shook her head frantically from side to side refusing to leave her hiding place behind my legs.

Frustrated at her lack of a sapient plushie and/or archangel, Temperance carefully maneuvered her face to Ida's newly free hand before biting down sharply. Ida winced. "All. Under. Control." she said, clearly at a loss as to how to stop imp-mode Temperance from assaulting her.

"I, uh," I frowned. Ida needed help and, while I couldn't do anything to resolve whatever had caused all this, I was confident I could at least manage a pair of children for a bit, "Look Ida, I know I'm useless and you think I'll just mess things up if I get involved with the actual monster fighting, but I think I can at least help with this, and you must need a break after… whatever this has been?"

Michael, landing on my head, nodded agreeably.

"I don't need a break and I don't think you're useless C! I just…" Ida pinched the bridge of her nose. "This is our job. It's our duty to handle this and I already messed up once tonight and let them get hit in the first place."

I didn't think I'd be able to beat Miss Stubborn as a Boulder, so I opted for another strategy instead.

Temperance as a scheming demon child was, suffice to say, novel. Inessa, on the other hand, I had known at this age. It was plain that both recognized me. But, going by the fact that Inessa was every bit as shy as she'd been back then and that I couldn't imagine Temperance actually biting anyone in a million years, it felt safe to assume that their personalities had changed backwards to some extent. They were "mixed-up" as Inessa put it. And, if there was one thing I knew I could do, it was managing a young Inessa.

"Hey Inessa," I kneeled down and whispered conspiratorially in her ear, "do you want to show Temperance some of Magical Starlight Princess Knight Orion: Lovely Star?"

Inessa perked up, then immediately ducked back behind my leg and muttered something quietly. She'd been very different at that age; hurt and shy. It had taken her years to come out of her shell.

"Go on, I'm sure she'll love it and you won't get in trouble," I gave the hesitating girl a pat on the back.

"Can I?" Inessa asked, looking to me for permission.

I nodded gently and gave her a little push. That was all she needed. Inessa marched over to Temperance and grabbed the other girl's hand, shaking her away from a bemused Ida. Inessa pulled Temperance back to me to grab my hand and solemnly dragged both of us to the couch. Temperance seemed intrigued enough at this side of Inessa to cooperate for the moment. But it wasn't like she really had a choice; I feared for anyone who tried to get between a ten year old Inessa and her love for Orion.

I shot Ida a triumphant smirk. It only took a few minutes, and a few desperate maneuvers to retain Temperance's attention, to get streaming set up and allow both girls to grow entranced by Inessa's childhood passion. The redhead offering a deluge of enthusiastic explanations to her blue haired team-mate. Temperance, for her part, seemed captivated by the cartoon, to the extent that she barely noticed Inessa's rambling.

I ruffled Inessa's hair one last time then extricated myself from the couch to confer with Ida.

"Ida," I whispered softly, eliciting a moan of acknowledgement. Her eyes flickered open and she faced me, even if she didn't say anything. "what's the plan?"

She glanced reluctantly to the kids, then to me and sagged in defeat, "If, and you really shouldn't feel obligated, but if you can watch them, I can go out and hunt the monster right now and then we can at least make it to school by lunch?"

I stared at her, "Ida, you can barely stay awake."

"I'm fine!" She said, defensively, "I can do this! I'm Diligentia, and not even I know my own limits!"

"Obviously," Michael added unnecessarily, causing Ida to blush, "Besides," the angel said, "Our mysterious foe's Resinner may take after her creator. It did seem to vanish with the dawn."

Ida frowned at that, "I'm sure you could fight it as you are," I lied. "But without Inessa or Temperance to help, it'd probably go a lot better if you had some time to recover first, and they've clearly been running you ragged. I mean, think how I'd feel if I left you to fight by yourself and you got hurt because I didn't even help you get a small break?"

Ida sighed, "Fine. My mom will be back in," she struggled for a bit, "a bit after noon, so we should try to hide somewhere by then. C-could you watch them while I take a nap?"

I nodded, and Ida's weary eyes shut once more.

"Bed!" I glared with mock severity. Ida nodded and stumbled toward her bedroom.

"Ida?" I asked after her.

"Yes?" she asked, wobbling a little as she turned back.

"Detransform."

Ida stared at me in confusion for a few moments before her uniform dissolved into yellow ribbons, leaving her in pajamas.

I looked to Michael, once Ida's door was firmly shut. "You need a break too?"

The angel looked at me, unimpressed, "Nonsense! Such as we actually have no concept of exhaustion," she looked to Inessa, currently holding Temperance off from biting her with both arms, "but those creatures do… elicit a hitherto unknown emotion."

"Right," I offered, "go get cleaned up and take a break. Ida'll need you in top form if she's fighting by herself," I had no clue if Michael did anything useful in fights, but giving people an excuse to make doing what they wanted the right thing tended to help.

The angel dipped her head in acknowledgement and floated away to seek her own rest. I moved back to the couch for a morning of babysitting. My stomach growled, reminding me that I hadn't had breakfast, but I paid it no mind. I'd feel uncomfortable raiding Ida's fridge and we would need to sort out lunch anyway soon enough. And, at 9:30, I only *really* had to keep them busy for two and a half hours. Easy.

Besides, it was nice to imagine Inessa at this age getting to have more than just the one friend, if only for a single afternoon. I alternated making sure the girls stayed occupied with quietly cleaning up the mess they'd created. I couldn't cover up all the damage, but living with dad these past few months had taught me to take care of all sorts of messes without attracting attention.

Temperance managed an hour of watching Starlight Princess Knight Orion fight against the forces of Despairo (empowered by the emptiness from between the stars) before she got bored. Inessa—and embarrassingly me—would have gone much longer; though Inessa's complaints that really Orion and her evil counterpart Lady Horizon made a better couple than Orion and Prince Sirius were growing increasingly loud by the end of our third episode. In retrospect, I wasn't quite sure how anyone, especially Inessa, could ever have been surprised by the fact that Inessa was gay.

Temperance might have proved a problem, but I had a secret weapon. The promise of ice cream, conditional on her not biting anyone or breaking anything, managed to restrain Temperance for another delightful 47 minutes as her boredom compounded.

And that brought me to 11:33am. Inessa had managed to drift off on the couch. That made sense, they likely hadn't slept last night either. Despite that, Temperance was practically vibrating with excess energy.

"So Temperance," I eyed the little terror carefully, "what do you want to do?"

"Well, big sis," the little girl smiled at me, "I think we should play dress up!"

Oh no. No. Nope. Disallowed. I refused! How, even reduced to the form of a child, could Temperance remain so monofocused when it came to me?

"In the first place, I'm not a girl so I can't be a big sis."

Temperance thought that over for a moment, then shook her head furiously, "Nope! My partner said I can just decide for anyone to be a girl if I want to, so you're a girl."

"Y-your partner!?" H-had Temperance been that precocious?

She nodded, "My co-cons, co-con…" she struggled with the word, "Cocoon spirit bird!"

I managed to parse that more or less, if not as quickly as desired. "Your co-conspirator?"

"Right! My cocoon spirit bird! She always helps me with things and we do everything together and are going to change things someday! She said I, or anyone can be a girl if I want to, no matter what the adults say!"

It took me a second to process that. Had Temperance just outed herself as transgender? I felt a spike of guilt at inadvertently prying a secret out from her while she was like this. She didn't look anything like I expected a transgender person to look, not that I really had much of anything in the way of expectations really. And, I guess being so used to thinking about that kind of thing would make more sense that she'd miscategorize me so badly.

I buried a faint twinge of something at the thought that Temperance was just allowed to decide to be a girl, and then got to be pretty and got to transform herself. She was allowed to change herself, to become someone she wanted to be and also she got to grow up as a girl and become a hero while I was stuck here being useless old ugly me.

"I think she meant anyone else could decide they wanted to be a girl," I offered. Obviously it couldn't be that easy. You were trans or you weren't. I might have not known much about what it was like to actually be trans, but wanting wouldn't make you a girl trapped in a man's body. At the same time, there wasn't much sense arguing with a good friend temporarily turned back into a preteen, especially when that good friend had more experience than I ever would with that topic when she had her full facilities.

Temperance ran a hand through her weirdly short hair—had she been kept from growing it out until she was older—and shook her head, "Nah! She's my partner, and she said so, so I get to decide! And you feel like a big sis."

I sighed, Some things never changed, and in this Temperance was as stubborn as Ida.

"What about me looks like a big sis?" I tried, irritably.

She tilted her head to the side, surveying me, then she spoke with the confidence of a judge rendering a final verdict, "Soft skin! Fluffy hair! Big round eyes!"

I frowned. My skin was hardly what I'd call soft. On the hair front: Okay, sure it had been a little while since my last haircut, and I'd been noticing that it was getting unruly, but I'd just been too busy.

"It's true," Ida's marginally less tired voice interrupted my thoughts.

I blinked. It was about time to wake her, if we wanted to dodge answering any strange questions with her mom. But, somehow, Ida had managed to rouse herself and sneak up on me.

"Whatever skincare routine you've been doing is working really well," she added, flopping down onto the couch, "and the haircut suits you."

"Tch," Temperance pouted with the reluctance of a thief who'd just found her mark well guarded.

"I, uh," I answered lamely. I had no idea what everyone was on about, "thanks I guess."

And now I was blushing. Why was I blushing over being told my skin was soft!?

"Anyway," Ida glanced toward Inessa's sleeping form, "I wanted to say, thanks. For earlier that is. I really needed that nap, it's just..."

"Just?"

"I like to be reliable, you know? It felt good when Michael told me I was qualified to be Diligentia. Like, even the world was acknowledging my hard work. It's hard to realize I need to be the one relying on others sometimes. So, umm, thanks for just taking over earlier. I needed that nap! But now," she grinned, "We can show that monster exactly why it shouldn't mess with us!"

"Ida," I offered somberly as I looked at my phone screen, "It's 11:45 and the monster won't show its face until sunset."

"Look!" she flailed. I wasn't used to a flustered Ida. When she wasn't working herself to the grave, she was the voice of reason between Inessa's general uselesness and Temperance's monotone snark. "It's one of those big inspirational speeches that you're always supposed to do before a game! Just go along with it, okay?"

"Okay. If it helps you fight, then it won't stand a chance."

"Better," Ida nodded.

"So I don't get to put big sis in a dress," Temperance said sadly.

"No!" I protested immediately, as if the words were a burning iron. "Where would you even find one?"

"You're not much bigger than mom," Ida offered, then clamped a hand over her mouth. "I mean," Ida clarified, "you shouldn't make C do things that make him uncomfortable, young lady!"

"W-weren't we planning on getting out of here before your mom comes home anyway? Besides, I promised Temperance ice-cream if she was good, so I was thinking we could try spending the afternoon in the park. I can text Inessa's family and tell them she snuck over pretty early to work on, I don't know a surprise for you or something, but we probably can't get away with having them at anyone's house…" Inessa was an early riser, and her magical girl duties often led to her coming home late, so her parents couldn't be that worried about her yet, but it was better to get our stories straight.

"Actually," Ida said tentatively, "That sounds great, but do you think you and Michael could watch them alone?"

"Going to grab some more sleep?"

"W-well, I really shouldn't skip lacrosse practice, and if I'm going, I should at least try to get to school for as much of the day as I should."

I stared at Ida in mute horror. She harrumphed.

"Actually," I offered tentatively, "I'm a bit worried about losing them. You know, or something. Especially if we're going out. Inessa is one thing, but Temperance is, well." I pointed to the blue haired menace, who had taken advantage of our distraction to chase a half-asleep Inessa around the apartment.

Ida hesitated, "I guess missing one day is okay. We can just study more to make up for later, Still, I did promise to be at practice."

For all she'd slept a little, Ida's gaze kept wandering longingly toward her bed and her steps were still a little unsteady.

"If you don't really rest up, you're not going to be able to fight tonight, so maybe just come with us to the park and relax a little?"

She hesitated, clearly drawn to the offer, then shook her head.

"I have responsibilities. I need to stay diligent! Besides, how can I be at my best if I don't practice?"

I sighed, "Practice is good and all, but if you just keep pushing yourself as hard as you can go, then what happens when something goes wrong? When you need to have a little more time or space or energy and you've already been working yourself to the bone? You'll have nothing extra to throw at an unexpected problem."

The diligent Ida glanced away, "Obviously you need to look after your health. But when things get hard, you just dig deeper and find it in you if it really matters!"

On the one hand, Ida was genuinely amazing. She got good grades, participated in multiple sports and helped out everywhere else. On the other hand, a stray breeze could knock her over right now and honestly, it seemed like I was more likely to lose track of her than Temperance if I had to keep herding them all.

"Anyway," I didn't have the strength or standing to argue with a genuine magical girl, "We should get out of here before your mom comes back. I managed to get things mostly cleaned up while you were napping, and we can figure this out after we get these little hellions," I did my best to gently remove Inessa's ponytail from Temperance's mouth and soothe the shy little redhead, "to the park where they can run through whatever energy they've got before you go fight."

Ida sighed, "I guess we should and, umm… Thanks for cleaning up and taking over for a bit? Really C, you're a life-saver."

I beamed, "I barely did anything, really!"

----

The day was beautiful and sunny and unseasonably warm for the season, if still a bit too cold to be perfect park weather. Michael was safely hidden inside Ida's backpack. I didn't anticipate that Temperance would actually want ice-cream after realizing how cold it was outside, but the small girl was firmly insistent that she had been promised, so we stopped at a little cafe by the park for lunch.

The burgers were mediocre, but watching Temperance devour her ice-cream and proceed to cajole away half of Inessa's made for an amusing sight.

"So, there's a playground near here," I offered Ida, "it's a bit cold for it, but I figure if we let them run around enough it'll be a lot easier to get through till evening and it could give you more time to rest."

She glared at me, "I'm fine. I don't need to be coddled."

"Sorry," I looked away first, "But… can I ask why you're so upset at the idea that you might need to rest like anyone else?"

Ida frowned, "I'm not against rest! You're as bad as Inessa and Temperance!"

"And Michael?" I asked with only the faintest hint of sarcasm.

"Yes! And she's usually telling them they need to spend more time practicing or patrolling."

"Ida, you're saying that literally everyone is telling you to slow down."

She had the grace to blush at that, and it was her turn to back down.

"I," she hesitated, "I mentioned before that Michael said I wasn't qualified at first. Inessa was the first and Temperance is special, but I had to work to prove I was good enough to help. It made sense to me that Michael would say I wasn't worthy," she shrugged. "I'm not bad, but I'm hardly special. I just pushed through and kept helping. Inessa helped me get into shape, and I guess that's how I won her approval in the end."

Ida stopped for a moment to toy with a french fry.

"I… I'm not talented," she said at last, "I can't keep up with Inessa or Temperance, or hey, even you, at the things you're good at. I definitely couldn't take a schedule like yours and miss a third of the year getting beaten up by monsters and then still have basically okay grades. This whole fighting evil thing? It's not like the others. It doesn't come naturally. And basketball? Lacrosse? There are so many girls there that have more natural talent than me."

"Ida…" I wanted to comfort her, to say something that would make it all okay.

"So that's why I need to keep pushing myself," she concluded. "And if I do better or if people rely on me, it's only because I work harder! I practice more; I train more. And I've gotten better than all of them. I study every day and it works out in the end. I've learned to be a magical girl even if it doesn't just click for me like it does for Inessa or Temperance." There was, I thought, a hint of guilt in her voice. She knew everyone else's concern wasn't so strange or unreasonable, no matter how she acted, and she pushed through anyway.

"I think you're pretty amazing actually," I admitted once I'd taken a moment to digest her words. "To be honest! I can barely work up the energy to get out of bed most days, much less keep throwing myself into things like you can. And, you were chosen to be a magical girl. You made all those teams. You throw yourself into everything and give your all and it works out. You're-"

Ida's fist struck the table, startling the kids and me alike. "I'm not!" she snapped. She was trembling. "I'm just not, okay. I try harder and I work harder and I practice more and that's almost enough, but I can't slow down, because if I stop pushing myself, if i just take it easy, then it'll be easier to do that the next time and then I won't be able to keep up!" To Ida, it seemed like falling behind her peers was a fate worse than death.

I'd never, in a thousand years, have thought I'd look into Ida's face and see even a shard of something like my own fears. Except, where I gave up, stopped trying and simply fell into hating myself, Ida kept moving forward. Was it any wonder she'd start to fear taking a break? She, unlike me, actually did things. She was the productive one, the one who deserved to rest, who needed it. Who was I to challenge that conclusion?

We sat in awkward silence until the waiter came by with the check and a more than welcome distraction.

Only as we shepherded the kids down the sidewalk toward the park did I speak. I still didn't know if there was an answer that'd help solve her worries. I certainly wouldn't be the one to come up with it if there was. But, saying nothing would only hurt even more.

"You don't need to be good enough to belong," I found myself saying. It was the kind of thing that should be true, but often wasn't in the end. It was still what Ida needed to hear. "Your friends aren't friends with you because you meet some standard as a person. You're all still friends with me and I'm basically useless at everything! But, if you get hurt while over-training yourself, you're just going to worry everyone. Believe me Ida, I wish I had a tenth the willpower you do, but you need to balance yourself when people depend on you! That's a part of hard work too, knowing when to hold yourself back so you have more later."

She thought it over for a while, and I was worried she was going to stand her ground, before she sighed.

"Inessa is right. You really are the wise one, you know? I guess I can take it easy just this once. But, I'm trashing that Resinner tonight!"

She stomped loudly on the sidewalk with enough force that I swear I felt the earth shake a little. It startled Inessa as well as a few other pedestrians. Ida frozen in a panic for a moment, then pulled up the hood of her winter jacket to hide her blush.

"Thanks. I mean it," she smiled at me. "You know, if you want to impress Michael, I'm sure we could figure out a good practice regime for you!"

I thought about it. It was a kind offer, and one that I wouldn't have imagined Ida making even a day ago. But I wasn't the saint of diligence. Ida might laugh about how she wasn't chosen, but wasn't the will to push through and keep going its own way of being special in the end?

We managed to make our way to the playground after plying Temperance with a few more treats. I would have been worried we were indulging her too much—particularly after Temperance announced that this was 'revenge on her big-self for being an idiot'—if this wasn't temporary and Temperance wasn't about to return to normal once Ida won her fight.

From there, we let the kids play; only slightly at Inessa's expense. I joined in for as long as I could, Ida spent a lot of the time resting on a bench before joining them for a game of tag.

And then, with Inessa and Temperance gently dozing off on a park bench, Angelic Saint Diligentia and the Archangel Michael marched off into the sunset to hunt a monster while I waited and watched the moonrise.

It was a crisp night, and the kids had cuddled up to each other for warmth before Inessa had slumped over in sleep and landed in my lap. I'd laid my own jacket over them; it wasn't so cold that I couldn't bear it, and the crisp winter air helped me stay focused as I waited for any sign of DIligentia's victory.

I hated that I couldn't join in. I hated that I couldn't help in a more meaningful way. But, getting to talk Ida through her worries had been something. She had reached out and she had trusted me and, I hoped, she would find the strength to rely on others, for all she was fighting alone right then.

I gently ran a hand through Inessa's hair and I counted the stars. I had, for once, done my part, and now I had nothing else to do but hope and for once that didn't feel so impossible.

And then, without any fanfare or pageantry, it was over. Both Inessa and Temperance were enveloped in a soft shimmering glow and began to stretch, returning to their normal sizes. I let out the breath I'd been holding as Inessa stirred and adjusted her top which had, thankfully, changed back with her.

I smiled to myself, glad to see that they were okay. Sure, I wished I could have helped Ida with the important part. Then I shook them awake. I wasn't sure about Temperance's home situation, but Inessa's family would absolutely be worrying and we had to get our story straight.


NEXT WEEK ON SHINING VIRTUE ANGELIC HEART!!!

Temperance decides to attend a concert to spend some time alone exploring more of Earth's culture. Watching the duo perform makes Temperance wonder if she made the right choice. But, what's this?! A Beast attack threatens to spell lights out for the show unless the Saints can come together to save the day.

Tune in for Episode 19: Shining! On Stage! Kopier Kat Got your Tongue?

Spoiler: Author's notes

Once again I'd like to thank the lovely @Chehrazad, @NemoMarx and @Gargulec for helping to elevate my rough Nanowrimo draft of this chapter into something cogent.

The next chapter is almost entirely new content however, so it may take a bit longer than a week to get written and revised.

Speaking of Madoka, I think what's most interesting to me about it these days is that it's not really a magical girl show. That is, the main character spends approximately none of the show as a magical girl. It is, instead, a show about becoming a magical girl and the weight that can have. That is, where most shows in the genre make the choice to be a hero something a stumbling block to get over, Madoka isn't afraid to make that decision the entire cornerstone of its narrative.

And, err, 7 chapter in with no sign of C wearing a skirt outside a dream, I can admit that, while I don't want to quite copy that structure, that Madoka is definitely a source that gave me some structural inspiration inspiration for this project, even if I don't want to engage with Madoka's particular themes or motifs in this work in any substantial way.

 

[Shadell]

The dreams had only grown crisper. The night air felt sharper against my skin, the cold moisture from falling snow seeped into my clothing. Most of all, the sounds of a city at night had gotten so bright and sharp that they dwarfed any music I'd heard in real life.

I bounced along the roofs, whistling along to Avaritia's distant howls. They were gleeful and free, the kind ey made when there were no magical girls to stand in our way, when we could roam as gods and nothing in the world could stop us.

And, as I jumped so high I could steal the moon (were stealing not eir habit instead of mine), I could admit how much I longed for this. The day would never even offer me wings that I might burn myself by flying too close to the sun. But dreams would give me all the imitations I needed to glide through the night.

I was making my way to Avaritia, to raise my heart in chorus with eirs. And then, so quiet I almost missed it, I heard another song beneath me: faint and desperate, longing to be freed. I had to answer.

I perched on the corner of a building; watching a pair of shadows bickering with each other below. One was as pedestrian as any other, a flickering shade of confusion and doubt with a hint of wrath for spice. But the other! Oh, if only it could let that beautiful song ring free!

And what emotion it carried! She was trapped in another's shadow, much as the waking me was trapped. And friendship and pride buried that desire deep in her heart, letting the sound bounce around and find resonance with itself until it begged to be let free. It was simply intolerable to let such music remain chained.

I didn't deserve an angel's wings, not when I hadn't had the courage to tell anyone about these precious dreams. And yet, the waking me would not understand even this, would never help someone embrace their sin. Here, I could accept my own dejection. It was a dream, and as long as the silly little waking me insisted it was but a dream, I could allow my desire the fullness of its power.

I pierced my thumb with one fang, then slipped behind the woman for a moment and shoved a single drop of glistening sap into the songbird's heart. Perhaps I should have felt guilty. I would hate a monster that forced me to cry out that bitterness deep inside where those I loved could hear. This was still but a dream, and you don't have to feel guilty about what you do in dreams.

The droplet gave her what she needed, gave the song in her heart that little bit of strength it needed to crack through all those walls she'd built around the songbird in her heart and set herself free to sing. I returned to my perch, watching from an overhang as I waited for the shadow's grand performance to begin.

My dear friends would stop her in the end; they were cruel like that. I could already hear Temperantia's restrained melody coming closer. But, even once her performance reached its inevitable end, this songbird would still know she had sung, and perhaps that would free her from that cage she'd built. In this, we formed a cycle: vice and virtue, night and day, cruel honesty and softly spoken lies.

I loved Inessa like a sister, I really did; but, at least in my dreams I could admit something deeper than that, aching for its own voice. A problem easily solved.

---

I woke up with a start. The dreams weren't going away. If I hadn't checked and asked and verified that the details didn't match up with what attacks were actually happening, I'd have started to get nervous. But they didn't match, and often I dreamt even when there were no monster attacks, and so there was no point in worrying anyone.

It was more likely that I was just guilty that I had almost been made into a monster, and unable to accept the sad fact that the most I'd ever be able to do to help my friends was play the useless cheerleader on the side.

At least they'd allowed me that much in the aftermath of getting turned into kids. Once Inessa and Temperance had returned to normal, and I'd been able to help Inessa explain her disappearance to her parents, the last hesitation at letting me work as a magical girl support crew member had vanished and we'd spent a chunk of the weekend hashing things out over text.

I'd expected dad to be angry with me missing school, and he hadn't been happy that they'd had to call him about my 'irresponsibility.' But he had always been uncomfortably enthusiastic about my relationship with Inessa, and he'd laughed off that at least he "didn't have to worry about me being gay." That didn't stop him from warning me what might happen if I got caught skipping again though.

A part of me wanted to turn around and shove it in his face exactly how badly he misunderstood my best friend. But Inessa and I agreed that my dad topped the list of people absolutely not allowed to know that Inessa was a lesbian, as satisfying as the moment might have been.

Sighing, I rose to my feet and, verifying that dad's door was closed, slipped into the bathroom. For a moment, I thought I saw Inessa in the mirror, but I shook my head and the apparition was gone. It was probably just my imagination. Granted, "it's just my imagination" was also exactly what I had told myself that time Gula Shark had sent a ghost-themed Resinner to possess me, so it was probably better to ask the others if they could sense anything odd.

But it was probably just a lingering memory of a dream. I splashed some water on my face and set the matter aside for now. If I didn't get ready fast enough, I might have to deal with dad, and I'd rather hurry than have that kind of morning.

I ended up waiting for several minutes outside of Inessa's house before my friend emerged, trying to brush her hair as she walked. It was unusual to see Inessa unprepared to face the day. Defying lead magical girl stereotypes, she was a morning person.

"Long night?" I asked.

Inessa gave me a tired nod, "Kopier Kat was, ugh, well at least it wasn't—"

"Fidget Spinner?" I cut her off. I'd heard the name a few times so far, exclusively in this context. Inessa shuddered, then nodded. "What was the deal with that one anyway."

"C," Inessa turned to stare at me very seriously, "we don't talk about that thing; we don't think about it; we do not acknowledge that it ever existed."

Naturally, that just meant I had to get the story one way or another someday. Were it actually sad or scary, Inessa wouldn't have reacted anywhere near so melodramatically. so the fact that none of the Saints would mention any details meant that it had to be deeply embarrassing.

I took her bag as we walked, allowing her to do her best to get her hair into something resembling presentable shape before we reached school.

"Everything went okay in the end though?

"Of course!" Inessa grinned, "We're amazing like that. You don't need to worry C, we'll keep you safe and sound."

I managed a smile in return, as much as the reminder of my own inability to protect myself without outside assistance didn't exactly fill me with warm happy feelings.

"It was good practice actually, thinking back on it" Inessa mused.

"Good practice?"

Inessa nodded seriously, "It kept copying and reflecting our attacks like, well, a version of her almost. Except this one was a giant humanoid tiger with a microphone and not my evil twin."

"How'd you win," I asked. This was good. The monster in my dreams had sung, but it had been bird themed. It was still just a lovely if weirdly persistent dream and I didn't need to tell anyone about it.

"Well, it had us on the ropes at first, but then Ida stopped using any of her big attacks and caught it in close combat. Once she knocked it off balance, Temperance knocked it into the air and then Castitas! Flare! Barrage!!!" she barely refrained from posing or shouting when she announced the attack name, "right to the chest."

That sounded promising. It could only be a good thing if Ida and the others were finally developing tactics to take the upper hand from their newest antagonist. Besides, imitating the others sounded like a really amazing power; it was relieving to hear that Inessa and company could find a way around it.

"That's our Ida," I nodded along to the story, "Reliable as ever."

Inessa's head bobbed up and down enthusiastically, as if she was the one who'd been praised.

"And she's finally getting more than 3 hours of sleep a night again! Whatever happened between you two during that incident must have really given her some perspective."

I started to note that nothing much had happened and any progress she'd made was almost certainly entirely Ida's doing, but I caught myself just in time.

"Incident? Which one is that?"

Inessa stamped her foot, "You know which one!"

"No, no, there have been so many," even Temperance would have turned feral at my grin.

"Hmph!" Inessa stuck her tongue out at me.

"How—" I started, smirking at her.

"Don't you dare," Inessa's eyes narrowed.

"—childish of you," I finished, sticking my tongue out at her.

Inessa growled at me, then grabbing her bag, proceeded to dash ahead toward school. I wasn't sure if fighting monsters was simply great exercise or becoming a magical girl had just made her superhuman in other ways, but she had no trouble leaving me in the dust.

At least, I assumed so until I saw her frozen, hiding ineffectually behind a lamp post as she stared at Lupin.

"Inessa, dear, this is a little stalkery," I noted somberly. "We may need to have you taken in for a few questions."

She did not respond. I tapped her on the shoulder. She started, then stared at me.

"C!" she whispered urgently, "perfect, walk into school with me so Lupin will come talk to us together!"

"Inessa…." I offered sadly, "have you considered just talking to her like a normal person?"

"No," she grabbed my hand and began to walk purposively past Lupin, "don't ask stupid questions."

"Good morning C!" Lupin practically jumped on me. "Here, take this," and shoved a square of slightly burnt iridescent fabric into my hands.

Inessa bit her lip in jealousy, so I thanked Lupin and pocketed the item instead of asking any of the hundred questions this whole exchange had prompted.

"It's okay Inessa," I smiled at her, "this kind of thing, well, a child just wouldn't understand."

Inessa's mouth dropped open and she tried to form words and failed. I gave her a smirk and my childhood friend glared at me in a way that promised revenge.

Lupin stared at Inessa for a few moments as she slowly lost the battle not to dissolve into a fit of giggles. I had no idea why she, the one person here who wasn't in on the joke, had that kind of reaction.

Inessa looked to Lupin, then back to me. I started to speak and saw, too late, that the mock anger had fled from her face in favor of something a lot more genuinely hurt.

"Inessa," I looked at her, trying to apologize.

Inessa's shoulders trembled a bit as she wordlessly turned and made her way into the school.

Fumbling, I mumbled a quick goodbye to Lupin, then dashed after Inessa. She ignored me; I probably deserved that.

---

I spent the rest of the morning classes going over what had happened again and again. I hadn't meant to be mean. I'd just felt glad to finally be in on one of the group's in-jokes to the point that I hadn't realized that saying that in front of Lupin it would be different.

But that wasn't an excuse, not really. Insulting Inessa in front of the girl she liked was a low blow, something I should have known better than to do if I wasn't just a big ugly insensitive lug who couldn't keep his foot out of his mouth to save his life. And besides, whatever excuse or motivation I could construct after the fact, I'd hurt Inessa.

So I grabbed a square of lukewarm cafeteria pizza and stumbled toward the usual spot, rehearsing what I had to say to Inessa for the hundredth time.

"Hey," I greeted everyone, earning a hi from Ida and a nod from Temperance. I winced, Temperance hadn't told me she was transgender and I'd accidentally pushed her into revealing that when she wasn't in her right mind. I owed apologies there too.

More importantly, Inessa didn't say anything and, in fact, made a point of looking away from me.

"Umm, Inessa," I knew what I had to say. I'd gone over it enough that I couldn't really mess it up.

She did not respond.

"I just wanted to say that I'm really sorry for earlier!" Slowly, Inessa's gaze swung to face me, but her mouth remained pressed in a thin line.

"I really shouldn't have said that and you're not childish. If anything, I'm the childish one who can't do anything. You're really great. I admire you a lot actually and I really shouldn't have joked like that around Lupin as hard as it is for you to talk to her."

A small smile worked its way across Inessa's face before turning into a blush. "H-hey! I'm not that bad!" she flailed.

"And, umm, if there's anything I can do to make it up to you, please let me know. Again, I'm so so sorry, you shouldn't have to do anything so if you want me to go hang out somewhere else or something, that's okay and…"

"C!" Inessa cut me off, looking a lot more alarmed, "It's okay! I'm not really that angry. Look, I was a little hurt that you just said that in front of Lupin like that, but it's not like it was on purpose or anything and you don't have to make it up to me and we definitely don't want you to leave!"

Ida and Temperance glanced at each other, then both turned away to let us work this out.

I took a deep breath as Inessa slipped around the table and hugged me. "Honestly, it's really just sweet that you're taking the whole apology so seriously when it wasn't a big deal."

"But," I hesitated. With anyone else it wouldn't have been. But I know how much Inessa struggled to approach Lupin and, even with Lupin suddenly deciding she was my best pal, Inessa had worked a long time to work up the courage to do more than completely freeze around her crush and I had probably set that back weeks.

"Look," Inessa grinned, "If you're so desperate to apologize, then I have a secret incredibly important project only you, Lupin's actual friend, could help me with, so do that and we'll call it even."

"You don't have to humor me," I mumbled balefully.

"I'm not humoring you! This is a big deal considering the date, and your help will be huge here!" Inessa grinned, "Honestly, I was worried about how I would bully you into helping, but now we've solved that problem."

"I'd have helped anyway," I muttered stubbornly, but sighed under the weight of Inessa's gaze, "but okay, if you're sure that's enough."

Inessa gave me a thumbs up, "of course, like I said, no big deal."

Ida looked at us both, "You two are very silly you know."

"Cavity inducing," Temperance pronounced with all customary apathy.

Inessa pouted at the two, "What does that mean!?"

"What she said!" I followed up.

Ida and Temperance glanced at each other, and then said nothing.

"H-hey!" Inessa looked between the two.

"Umm, actually, while we're still doing apologies, I needed to talk to you Temperance if that's okay." I winced. That was a particularly awkward transition, even for me.

She tilted her head curiously at me, "sure." was all she said.

I winced, "Umm, out in the hall maybe?"

"Okay," Temperance stood, "that worked well last time."

I nearly tripped over my own feet at that, and Temperance allowed herself a small giggle, but she did follow me out into the mostly empty hall, and then—factoring in that reminder—into an actually empty classroom next to the cafeteria.

"Umm," I hesitated. I'd been planning this of course, but I'd been so caught up on dealing with Inessa that I hadn't thought this one out much. "I guess, umm, you kinda, accidentally mentioned you were transgender during the whole incident on Friday."

Temperance silently tilted her head to the side, a lion lazily waiting for its prey to come even closer.

"And, umm, I realized it wasn't good to get that knowledge from you while you weren't really in your right mind."

"Oh," Temperance said nothing else for a while. "It's not a secret or anything."

"R-really?" I asked.

"I'm in the GSA," she said, slowly enunciating every letter in the acronym.

I couldn't believe it. Temperance actually voluntarily engaged in extracurricular activities!?

"But," she considered, "if you're determined to make it up to me too, something could be arranged."

"I'm going back to the others!" I smiled cheerfully at her and ignored the obvious bait. In a way, that joke had done a lot more than Inessa's overeager dismissal to assure me that things were okay between us.

"Actually," I hesitated at the door, "W-what's it like being transgender anyway?"

Temperance closed her eyes and ignored me, for long enough that I thought I was being dismissed, before she spoke.

"It's like learning how to want without hating yourself for wanting." She tapped her index finger against her lips in thought a few times, before speaking again. "Like, abandoning thoughts about what you can do and just becoming."

"Oh," I said. "That sounds nice." I didn't really understand what Temperance meant. That was only fair; I wasn't the transgender girl in the room. Even so, it sounded nice enough to burn.


---

"Allow me to explain our mission!" Inessa declared after her mom had departed with a reminder that she'd pick us up around 6, "But first C, do you know what day it is?"

"Monday?" I responded, bewildered. We were walking through the mall parking lot, facing the large stone edifice that had no doubt been a place people actually went once a long time ago back when the boomers were young.

"C, C, C," Inessa sighed dramatically. "Today is February 12th!" She looked at me expectantly.

"Yes," I agreed, "that does seem to be the case."

"Chocolate!" Inessa declared, "Today is the day to buy chocolate! And you are going to help, even if you don't have a romantic bone in your body!"

"Hey!" I snapped, "I'm not that dense!"

My dearest childhood friend merely sighed and shook her head.

"Anyway," I mock-glared at her, "you want to buy something you can give to Lupin on Wednesday, right?"

That mention was all it took, Inessa's face turned red and she froze before shyly bobbing her head up and down.

"And that'll really make up for this morning?" I paused just inside the automatic doors, waiting for Inessa to follow.

"C!" that snapped her out of her crush induced catatonia, "I've already said it's fine!"

But it didn't feel fine, and this wasn't a real favor. I wasn't actually doing anything for her I wouldn't have jumped at doing anyway. Except, if I really said that, it would make the apology more about me than her, and that would just be selfish.

"Okay, but, are you sure you're going to be able to give it to her?"

Inessa frowned. "I think I have to," she admitted at last. "Like, when I became Castitas, it was the resolve to face my feelings wholeheartedly instead of trying to run from away from my own desires, to face things sincerely you know? Even if she hates me, I can't just stand still."

I honestly couldn't say I understood how Inessa embracing her inner lesbian equated to chastity in any substantive sense, but it made sense to her and besides, Inessa managing to overcome her own weaknesses yet again was nothing if not inspirational. As her friend, how couldn't I cheer her on as she once again proved what a chasm there was between us.

"I do not get what that has to do with being a saint and/or fire or chastity, but that's pretty amazing you know?"

Inessa grinned, "Right, it's rare that you admit how amazing I am!"

Her sense of purpose restored, and her obvious anxieties temporarily pushed to the wayside, Inessa had no trouble marching through the largely empty mall toward a surprisingly crowded chocolate shop. Valentine's Day seemed to trump the fact that no sane person had visited a mall in the last decade.

She glanced around the pastel counters and took in the smell of sugar permeating the air before pushing through the crowds toward a large display of heart-shaped boxes advertising Valentine's sales.

"Now C," she turned to face me holding two small heart-shaped boxes, "coconut milk chocolate or dark chocolate with macadamia nuts?"

I pondered. The answer was obvious really. I smiled brightly at Inessa.

"No clue." I told her.

She pouted at me, "You're her friend, you should know these things!"

I wondered about that. Sure, Lupin was friendly, but I'd hardly ever hung out with her really, with all the things I was gradually getting pulled into. At most, we really greeted each other at school. And yet, some little part of me felt like I knew them so much better than that. Like we understood and trusted each other on some deeper level. And yet…

"I have no clue what kind of food she likes."

Inessa sighed, then imperiously waved me away and returned to her considering.

"Sorry," I muttered. Inessa—lost in indecision—didn't notice.

I drifted away and began to wander the store. I felt bad, I really did. I'd hurt Inessa's chances with Lupin this morning. Or rather, I didn't actually think Lupin would remember what happened. She was the type to laugh easily and rage easily, not that I'd actually seen her angry, but not the type to really care about that kind of thing, as much as it might move her in the moment. Inessa wouldn't usually let something like getting laughed at drag her down either.

But, Lupin was a weak spot of Inessa's, someone she wanted yet feared to approach. And because she hadn't approached Lupin, that little crush of hers had grown into a bit of an obsession. Lupin talking to me, being my friend, had ultimately helped Inessa get enough exposure that she was working through that, but… Even a little bit could hurt, and it was obvious she'd been thinking about Valentine's Day since before I messed things up, working up her courage to try something bit by bit.

I sympathized with her and admired her deeply for it. And I owed it to her to help somehow, except, I had no clue what kind of chocolate Lupin would like, or if she even liked chocolate at all.

My eyes drifted around the displays as I did my best to ignore the push of bodies in the store. And then I saw it. It was perfect.

"Inessa!" I grabbed a box and started searching for the girl. Luckily, bright red hair wasn't hard to spot and the store wasn't that large.

"What is it?" she asked curiously.

I handed her the box. She looked it over confused. "Okay, it's definitely Lupinish, but it's not really romantic is it?" she asked eventually.

"No, no, you're thinking about this all wrong," I grinned at her. "Look, if you got something big and hearts that said 'I LOVE YOU' in giant letters, could you really give it to her?"

Inessa hesitated, then nodded.

I stared at her silently.

Her shoulders slumped.

"Exactly!" I said, "and this isn't romantic!"

I held up the little tin proudly. Even if it was small and inexpensive, it was still chocolate and that meant it could get the point across. It was also skull-shaped, and the chocolates inside looked to be as well.

"But," I continued, "even if the chocolate itself isn't romantic, obviously Valentine's Day is. So, no matter what chocolate you give her, the meaning will still come across."

She nodded thoughtfully.

"And," I delivered the masterstroke, "As you so expertly pointed out Miss Brandt, the one thing everyone knows about Lupin is that she's a massive goth. It doesn't matter if she likes dark chocolate, she'll appreciate the skull aesthetic."

Inessa clapped.

"Sold!!" she said at last, "you really are good at this kinda thing, you know?"

I sagged in relief. This would work. I'd helped and now the big part would be up to Inessa. As gifts went, this wouldn't be a big one. But it could still be a step tying Lupin and Inessa closer together. From there, it wasn't hard to see how they could be friends and, honestly, they'd make a good couple, even if it meant that they'd both probably spend a little less time with me.

Besides, it wasn't hard to picture Lupin joining the Saints. Sure, she said she was greedy, but I knew she was a nice person at heart. She definitely had the confidence and grace to know exactly what to do with herself during a monster attack. It wasn't hard at all to picture her in a Saint's uniform.

And, with four virtues left to fill, the Saints deserved all the capable help they could get.


NEXT WEEK ON SHINING VIRTUE ANGELIC HEART!!!

When Charlie succumbs to Lupin's puppy-dog eyes and agrees to skip school and hang out at the mall, Inessa makes the hasty decision to follow them in secret against her better judgment. But what's this? A monster attack spirals into a confrontation with Avaritia that leaves Inessa's friend in danger?!

Tune in for Episode 20: Could This Be a Date?! Inessa Brandt's Day Off

 

[Shadell]

Inessa paced anxiously in front of the school gates, one trembling hand clutching a small gift-wrapped package. We had agreed that, with February 14th being a half day, it'd be easiest for Inessa to make her move before school instead of hoping to catch Lupin during lunch or after classes let out.

We'd also agreed that it would be better if I was there for emotional support and Lupin bait, but far enough away that they could talk by themselves. So, I found myself waiting a few dozen feet from Inessa for a solid half hour in the cold and unpleasantly damp morning air. At least, Inessa's frenetic pacing was probably keeping her warm enough.

Finally, as the trickle of other students passing us turned into a stream, Lupin appeared. As was becoming the norm, she looked around before waving to me and heading directly in my direction. This was supposed to be Inessa's cue, and yet, the heroine of justice opted to freeze in place instead. She had seen Lupin, there was no question of that. I watched Lupin approach with a silent wince.

"Come on Inessa," I whispered under my breath. "You've got this!"

Finally, Inessa stepped forward in front of the goth, late enough that she might have bowled the other girl over if Lupin hadn't hopped backwards out of Inessa's path at the last moment. Despite the distance, I could still see that Lupin was distinctly amused at the exchange.

I could also see Inessa fumbling, turning the words we'd practiced yesterday evening into a series of incoherent noises going by her increasingly panicked gesticulations. Lupin nodded along, content to watch the morning's entertainment for however long Inessa's one woman show lasted.

"HERE!" Inessa shouted at last, startling a few other students as she shoved the box at Lupin. Finally, it was Lupin's turn to freeze. She surveyed the gift-wrapped package in what had to be mute confusion. .

"H-happy, umm, V-valentines…" I, and every student outside the school could clearly hear Inessa's voice as it gradually fizzled into awkward silence.

Lupin looked at the gift, then at Inessa, as if she wasn't quite sure what to make of the exchange. Then something clicked and she smiled brightly and took the box. I couldn't hear what she said to Inessa, as Lupin had not forgotten how to control the volume of her voice in a gay panic, but I could see Inessa all but melt in response.

Lupin took the box of chocolates and placed it firmly in her bag and then, a little awkwardly, ruffled Inessa's hair. I let out the breath I'd been holding. Inessa had done it. Now she and Lupin could start to get closer.

Then, as Inessa predictably froze, Lupin turned and bounced toward me heedless of Inessa's hurt look.

"That was neat! Anyway, how are you doing this morning C!" She looked me over appraisingly as if Inessa hadn't all but confessed to her. "I see, I see. You're coming along really nicely you know!"

"I, what?" I wanted to be irritated that Lupin had blown past Inessa's feelings so rapidly, but as usual, the goth girl mostly just left me befuddled.

Lupin demonstratively jabbed me in the chest.

"Oww!" I offered, rubbing the affected area. For some reason, it hurt far more than I would have anticipated.

"Yep, yep! Just as I thought. Coming along pretty nice indeed!" she said knowingly.

"What."

"Anyway, you know what this means?" Lupin said, running directly past the fact that I very clearly had no clue what any of this meant.

Mutely, I shook my head, as much at our meticulously planned morning going off the rails as at Lupin's question. This was not how this was supposed to go. Inessa and Lupin were supposed to talk, and I was supposed to be here offering silent emotional support to Inessa. Instead, incomprehensibly, Lupin had ignored Inessa after all her work and turned her attention to me.

"It means we need to go on a shopping trip! A regular girls' day out and all of that!" Lupin said this triumphantly, as if any of this sequence of events made sense.

"Well… have fun I guess?" I tried not to let any bitterness creep into my voice. Lupin couldn't have known how much effort Inessa had invested into this little exchange.

"Aww, you joker! Nope, it means you need to skip school and come with me!" Lupin said, profoundly missing the hint.

Pitch black nails wrapped around my wrist with vice-like strength and Lupin started dragging me away.

"W-wait!" I planted my feet to try and resist the inexorable goth. "Y-you should try going with Inessa instead! I'm sure I'd be useless shopping and if you want a girls' day out, Inessa would be much better company."

Lupin had already hurt things with Inessa, I was sure of that. But if I could just reorient her, maybe the day would still turn out okay?

Lupin stopped, then turned to face me with a pout. "Oh come on!" she said. "I'm your friend, Inessa's nice and all, but, like, I want to spend time with you."

Behind Lupin, I could see Inessa's face distorting into a variety of increasingly tragic expressions as she stumbled toward us.

"I really can't afford to miss school," I parried, trying and failing to pull my hand from Lupin's grip. This was supposed to be Inessa's role. Inessa was the one people liked, the one who'd been working up her courage for days to take that little step and talk to Lupin. Her efforts were supposed to be rewarded. That's what everyone wanted to see.

Lupin flashed me a smile, pearly white canines peeking out from beneath her purple lipstick, "Now now, your grades are fine! You haven't gotten attacked by monsters in weeks, so really you've gotta be way ahead as hard as you work."

She was right, though I'd had no clue she'd been paying attention enough to know that. At the same time, I liked being able to actually attend class and not have to do makeup studying while also nursing a sprained ankle or arm or a minor head injury.

"I can't." I said stubbornly, silently apologizing to Inessa.

The smile fell from Lupin's face, and she let me go, looking a bit like she was the one being dragged somewhere against her will.

"Please?" she asked, the barest hint of a tremor in her voice. "I, uh, don't really have anyone to do this kind of thing with these days and my uncle's been in a mood lately and, of course we hang out, but it feels like it's always just a casual meeting at school and…. I was kind of hoping we could, umm…"

That simply wasn't fair. I wondered how long Lupin had been working up the courage to ask this. It was hard to see beneath her veneer of confidence, but the way she said 'please' left me starting to suspect that her carefree attitude might mask as much trouble expressing herself as Inessa's ineloquent stammers.

"Y-you should go," Inessa said weakly. "Go and, umm, have fun!" her voice cracked; she was smiling, but I could see a tear dripping down the side of her face.

"I-is it really okay?" I asked her.

"Just go!" Inessa stomped her foot. "Don't worry about me!"

Lupin glanced between us, finally realizing just how much tension filled the air. "So…." her voice trailed off awkwardly.

I didn't know what to do. Today was supposed to be a bridge between Inessa and Lupin, a way for them to get closer, and sure, I'd have been pushed to the side a little, but I belonged in the background anyway. And yet, some tiny little bitter part of me was happy that Lupin had looked at Inessa and—for inscrutable reasons—opted for my company instead, that Lupin wanting to ask me to hang out somehow provoked a fraction of the anxiety Inessa felt approaching Lupin.

Inessa's day was already ruined. Would it actually help anything if I crushed Lupin's hopes as well? And Inessa had already given her permission. She didn't want me to blow Lupin off. I wanted to run away, but if that just ended up upsetting both Inessa and Lupin, it would be the worst outcome of all.

"Okay," I sighed. What was the worst that could happen?

---

"No, anything but this," I edged away in horror from the creature advancing on me: a pair of twisted hooks in its hands, an even more twisted grin upon its lips. How had it gone so wrong, so fast?!

At Lupin's insistence, I'd once again found myself in the mall alongside a Lupin who clearly knew her way around this crumbling piece of Americana.

As it was, the mall was mostly deserted at this time on a Wednesday morning (or, I snidely thought, basically at any time on any day). Lupin had dragged me down the largely empty concourse with a clear sense of purpose, marching us into a boutique. The words "Hot Topic" were emblazoned in black block letters against the white mall wall above the store's entrance.

I'd anticipated boredom—and a chance to think over my lingering guilt about Inessa's situation—while Lupin picked out some stuff for herself and pretended that my input would have mattered. It had definitely seemed like the kind of place she would shop, going by the amount of elaborate all black-clothing clothing and the frankly excessive amount of chains.

And that seemed to be exactly what she was doing when she'd marched to the jewelry and began foraging through bits and bobs. Occasionally, she'd held something up to me, an earring or a necklace, before returning it to the tray with a shake of her head. I hadn't thought to wonder why she was doing that until it was too late.

Finally she'd grabbed a purple apple necklace that promptly went in a pocket and a somewhat similar looking pair of green apple earrings.

I'd breathed a sigh of relief. Watching Lupin shop hadn't been boring per-say. The way she'd surveyed all these little cheap accessories with an expert's eye and then asked my input now and then like I was somehow involved in this whole process had felt oddly nice.

But, then she'd turned to me with that smile and said those horrid words. "I think these will suit you perfectly C!"

I'd shaken my head. I'd told her that, as a guy, obviously I had no use for them. She'd insisted that plenty of guys wore earrings and pointed to the cashier who, indeed, seemed to be a guy with enough metal in his ears to drastically elevate the local average.

I told her that my ears weren't pierced, she told me that that was an easily solved problem..

And, deprived of excuses, I'd resorted to denial and retreat. That had only served to stimulate some predatory instinct lurking in the dark corners of Lupin's brain. And that brought us to the present situation, with a monster advancing on me, her face carved into a sadistic grin.

I backed away, shaking my head, "No, anything but this!"

Lupin advanced, offering the earrings to me. "Come on, you know they'd look cute on you, a great match for your eyes!"

"My eyes are brown!" That at least gave me room for a logical rebuttal. Besides, nothing really looked cute on me.

"With cute little green flecks in them when the light hits right. It'll look great!" Wait, what? I had never noticed that.

"Look, you're saying everything," she grinned triumphantly, "Except that you don't want them. "Now, it'd break my poor little heart if you don't have something to match my new necklace; but, if it's not your thing, just say so."

I scanned the store for any escape. I thought I saw a flash of red out of the corner of my eye, but, upon glancing that way, the store was as empty as it had been the entire time.

"I don't wa…." I gazed into Lupin's pleading eyes and the protest died on my lips. "My dad would kill me," I said instead. That wasn't quite true, it wasn't like he'd ever actually hit me or anything.

"Oh," her eyes shifted toward the floor and her smile flickered. "Yeah, parents are like that, huh. Anyway!" She turned back to me. "You can hold on to them for now, and, eventually, you'll be able to wear them. You'll find a place where you can be you."

I thought of Lupin's uncle and how Avaritia, of all people, had seemed terrified of what he might do to em for my failure to become a monster. I really had no reason to complain when that's what Lupin was probably dealing with.

"Sure," I managed, wondering at the strange idea of me owning earrings. It wasn't that wild. I realized that the years when a boy with pierced ears was shocking and controversial had long passed. Even so, it felt illicit.

Immediately Lupin brightened and wrapped me in a hug, "Now that's the reaction I was hoping for bestie!"

She pocketed the earrings with the necklace and hopped over toward a display of belts.

"See any you like?" she asked as if anything in this store was something someone like me could pull off.

"They're kinda… a lot," I said, staring at a belt covered with studs and skulls and dangling chains.

"Well, obviously!" Lupin picked up one with a wolf's head buckle, examining it critically, "that's the whole point! It's armor, a way of showing the world that no one gets to stop you from going over the top or being too much, that you're not afraid of what they'll do to you anymore and that you can build an identity for yourself no matter how corny or cheap or commercial and they can't do anything to bring you down."

Lupin picked up a long belt covered with spikes, "This is not a $19.95 faux leather belt! No, it is a declaration of freedom, even if being free means indulging in terrible taste and bad cliches and spending money you shouldn't on all sorts of silly things!"

I wasn't quite sure what to say to that. Lupin was fascinating in the way she managed to go from bubbly goth to demagogue from one moment to the next. On some level this was ridiculous. On another, there was a desperate passion driving her every word, as if she needed to be heard and understood.

"That sounds pretty impressive when you put it like that." I had to give her that, however absurd the contents of her speech.

She nodded, "You should try finding your own armor." She stopped, "Umm, unless your dad would be a problem there."

"He is," I said, bitterly.

"Ah, then I'll store the dress for you."

That would probably have induced some kind of panic, had not Temperance been going out of her way to desensitize me to the fact that sometimes people in real life just wanted to force-femme you for incomprehensible reasons.

"Is that what's going on? This is some new ploy from Temperance?" I might have been a little bitter at the thought that Lupin would brush Inessa's feelings aside just because she'd had a plan to jump in on the 'Make Fun of Charlie Brigade'.

"No," Lupin blushed, as the word came out a bit sharper than she seemed to have intended. "She's not really on speaking terms with me these days."

"Oh, umm, sorry…" And, great, obviously they weren't conspiring, I'd never even seen them together in the first place.

Lupin returned to the belts, "I'm too greedy to stop her if taking the wrong path helps her work through some things. And she looks a lot happier now, so it's probably working out for her." Lupin's voice was too carefully magnanimous to be as okay as she claimed to be. There was something there that had yet to scab over and I wondered what the story was. No matter what, finding out that someone you were close to—Mom's face flashed through my mind—felt better off without you specifically in their lives… That had to hurt.

"But," Lupin sneered, "They should know that I'm greedy enough to take her back the moment that she finds out exactly where that road leads. Besides, I've got the most adorable new partner now, so there's no need to mope!" she winked at me meaningfully then dropped the belt back into the display and moved to examine a shelf full of skirts.

I found myself picturing Lupin and Temperance together. Something about that felt familiar and I couldn't help but wonder if Lupin and Temperance had been an item. As far as I knew, Lupin had only started school this year, so it wasn't impossible she'd known Temperance before the latter transferred in. I had no clue what mistaken path Lupin would think the Saint of Temperance was taking, but I had no business asking really.

"That doesn't seem very greedy," I fired back instead.

"Of course it is! It's the greediest thing of all!" There was an undercurrent of zeal in her voice, "To steal a little happiness for yours, even if it means they get to make mistakes and do the wrong thing, that's greedy. Otherwise, why'd everyone care so much about making sure you only get to be happy if you can do it while you look and act 'right.'"

"That," I shrugged, "still sounds more like being nice?"

"I contain multitudes; I am both nice and greedy! It's the best combination you know! I get to be nice to those I like and I don't have to put up with anyone else."

"And yet," I sighed dramatically, "you're joining Temperance in trying to force me into a skirt club."

"Mmmh hmm, because I want you happy," she ran her hand through the fabric of a skirt before frowning and shaking her head. "And some people are only happy when they get a little push."

She abandoned the skirts in favor of advancing on me, carelessly intruding into my personal space until she was only inches from me. One hand traced its way across my jaw.

"That's you isn't it? You complain and you snark and apologize and deep down you like it when you get pushed like this. You need to be forced to be the center of attention, to get fussed over, at least, fussed over the right way. And you're so close to letting yourself realize everything you're missing. Obviously a greedy greedy girl would want to give you a little shove to get you to the finish line."

"I, umm, that's.." I failed to find a word. Was she flirting with me? That would make no sense, why would someone as beautiful and cool as Lupin flirt with someone like me? Besides, she had just suggested she was gay. Of course she could be into both guys and girls. But if she was, Inessa had made her feelings perfectly clear and I obviously couldn't compete with Inessa.

I gulped, and Lupin slid closer still, till we were practically nose to nose. Her eyes looked up to mine, and yet, somehow it felt like she was looking down at me instead. Literal resinners had left me feeling less like prey than Lupin in that moment.

I broke eye-contact first, searching for something, anything, to break the strange stalemate I found myself in. I found it in Inessa's surprised face, staring at me in horror from behind a comically large pair of sunglasses and a fedora she'd clearly pulled from a nearby rack.

"I should wait outside," I stepped away from Lupin and dashed toward the door, trying not to be sick.

Obviously I was being an idiot. There was no way Lupin, or anyone, would be interested in me. Besides, she was almost certainly gay or bi, and if she was, Inessa was, quite literally it seemed, right there.

The stale air of the mall, and the vista of abandoned storefronts proved just the thing to calm me down. I was being ridiculous, Lupin was just touchy-feely. She almost certainly didn't even see me as a boy versus just another friend. And like, would I really want her to? Inessa had been crushing on her forever. I couldn't betray her like that, even if there was nothing there after months of quiet sighs and…

"Here," Lupin's voice was more embarrassed than anything else as she handed me the earrings and a strip of dark green ribbon, "An apology gift for before, no refusals."

"You don't have to apologize, and what even is this anyway?"

"A choker! I believe you're legally required to have at least one." I had no clue what Lupin meant, but she shoved it into my hands and stepped past me before I could object.

"Anyway, beyond finally getting to come here with a friend I don't really have much of an agenda today. Should we check out another store? Hit up the food court?" Her voice was hurried, with an awkward pitch to it.

"Food court sounds fine," I offered just as unnaturally, wrapping the earrings in the ribbon and placing both in my pocket.

So we made our way to the food court and acquired horrific imitation Chinese food. Sadly, the awkward atmosphere prevented us from commiserating over the cultural crimes pretending to be lo mein.

"See!" Lupin said eventually, unable to endure the silence. "This is what I mean when I say I'm greedy! I don't go slow when I should. Anyway, let's just forget that happened."

"I—" what did she think had happened? Lupin had been friendly and I'd run away in a panic, "Look, you were fine, I just," misread things and had seen Inessa and been terrified that things would compound and the person I loved most in the world would think I'd betrayed her. None of that had been Lupin's fault, not really. "It was getting a little stuffy in there and I, umm, sorry."

She shook her head, "You did nothing wrong! I was being pushy; you're allowed to get overstimulated or want some air or some space to sort yourself out. It's important to remember not to let anyone, even me, push you too much and…" she trailed off again. "Let's just forget it and pretend it never happened?"

"What never happened?" I asked uncertainly.

"Exactly!" Lupin reiterated.

"Okay…."

She beamed at me. "I really like it here, you know," she said, grabbing the topic by the horns and forcing it to change.

I made an appropriately curious noise to indicate my acceptance of the escape from mutual awkwardness. I needn't have bothered; Lupin needed no assistance to build momentum.

"It's, like, this is where teenagers go to spend money they shouldn't on junk we don't need. It's frivolous! It's fun! It's hip! And, like," she hesitated, "For the longest time, even after we'd decided to come here, my uncle didn't really want us going out. But, we got to watch your TV and see everything through that little box and wonder what it was like."

She took a bite of noodles, seeming to savor the thoroughly unappetizing pseudo-meat. "And now I get to actually come to one of these and it's better than I imagined. Okay it's dying, I get that, but it's still here and it still means something and if anything being halfway dead just makes it shine even more and getting to be here with a friend…" She blushed. Lupin, who I was fairly certain didn't understand the concept of embarrassment, blushed. "I've never really gotten to do anything like this."

A part of me ached to tell Lupin that it hadn't been hip to hang out in the mall for at least a decade. But I could hardly do it after that speech.

"What was your childhood like?" I asked instead. I couldn't place a lot of what she said into any semblance of a normal life, but enough sounded alarming, even beyond the fact that her uncle was evil, that I found myself worrying for Lupin.

"It sucked and I hated it." Lupin responded cheerfully. "They did everything they could to try and make us into 'virtuous children', no matter what would have broken along the way."

I winced at that. "I'd say 'I'm sorry,' but that wouldn't cover it, would it?"

She shook her head. "No, but we got away, in the end. I mean," she laughed, "I'm pretty flexible, you know. I could have bent myself up enough to fit in without breaking. But we didn't and now things are better and someday we'll get to go back and force them to see that they're wrong and then there won't be any more kids like us!"

A noise I couldn't quite identify made its way out of my lips. Lupin's childhood was unimaginable to me, and I had no idea who she meant by 'us'. But I knew what it was like to be pushed to become an ideal you're entirely unqualified to match.

And yet, I couldn't imagine having the feeling of purpose that came through in Lupin's words, the weight she placed on her values and the way she could dedicate herself to a cause. I wondered what it would feel like to believe so much in something.

"Anyway," Lupin swerved the conversation back to the trivial as easily as she breathed. "Anything else you want to do today while we're here?"

"Do they have a bookshop?" I asked, glad for an escape from the weight of Lupin's ideals.

"A tiny one, but they do have some things if you want to head that way," So spake Lupin: Mall Expert.

So we dumped our trays at the nearest garbage can and made our way down the mall concourse until we reached a small nook full of shelves that were stretched higher than I could reach. I studiously pretended not to notice the redhead shadowing our steps. I had no idea what to say to her or how she was doing, but pointing out that I knew she was there could only hurt and there'd be time to check in with Inessa later.

And, to be honest, it was hard to remember to worry about that sitting on the carpet of the romance section, surrounded by the scent of paperbacks, pretending the bookstore was a library as I alternated reading and failing to explain the appeal of the genre to a curious Lupin.

It was a good day. Well, until the Resinner attacked.

We didn't see it at first. But, after the third time, you don't really need to see it to recognize the signs. Someone screamed in the distance, soon joined by others with a bestial voice calling out louder than any of them. Footsteps added a frantic percussion to things as panic sent the mall's denizens scurrying for safety and showed just how many people could manage to be in a nearly empty mall. More than any of that, the air carried a charge. It was hard to describe, but there was a static charge in the air whenever a monster was near, like the world itself was reacting to their presence.

Besides, we were out in public and Inessa was nearby. It had been inevitable. So few days had ended as nicely as they'd begun since Inessa became Castitas.

I saw Inessa poke her head out from behind a shelf and look around nervously, no doubt worrying that Lupin might see her transform. At least, no one else had stuck around the bookshop but the three of us. That meant the problem was easily fixed. I rose to my feet and began dragging Lupin toward the only exit via a path about as directly away from Inessa as I could manage. The sooner she transformed, the sooner the monster's attention left the bystanders, the sooner this could be behind us and we could get back to whatever was left of the day.

"We should make a run for it," I offered, poking my head through the open book store doors and trying to ignore the rising feelings of panic in my chest.

Lupin shrugged, "If you say so."

In the distance, I could see the monster. Its body was a billowy patchwork cloak covering what seemed to be a mass of jangling chains and hooks. I couldn't read anything on the various patches, but it wasn't hard to guess they represented some kind of branding exercise gone mad.

Seeing as the monster wasn't near enough to grab us, Lupin and I joined the scattered mall-goers in a retreat. I counted the seconds in my head, waiting to hear the sound of our salvation.

"Castitas! Flare! BARRAGE!!!" Inessa shouted, launching right into her biggest attack, before following it up with her standard, "Cleansing evil with the flames of purity…" The heat behind us served as a warm confirmation that everything would be okay in the end.

I didn't hear any of the others, but I'd hardly help anyone by being useless and getting in the way. Instead, I focused on staying together with Lupin as we dashed through the mall.

Someone close to us cried out, and I thought for a moment they'd somehow been hit by a stray attack of one sort or another. That wasn't the case. The noise came from a child of perhaps seven or eight, all bundled up in heavy winter clothes. A glance around at the absence of anyone helping confirmed they'd gotten separated from their parents in the attack and finally fallen and screamed in panic.

Lupin gave me a silent nod, and we moved toward the kid.

Gently, I knelt next to them, helping them to their feet as I offered my best comforting noises and tried to pull them along with us. He—he seemed to be a he—was too panicked to cooperate, almost swiping me as I approached.

"Try to calm down and don't hurt yourself. It'll be okay," my voice cracked, "Just let us help and we'll find your parents, okay?"

For a moment we made eye contact. His cries petered out. Then Lupin's arms came from behind and lifted the boy up into a princess carry. A second later she was moving ahead, easily sprinting despite her burden resuming its attempts at flailing.

"Very sweet, C, but help now, talk later!" she called back to me.

We rounded a corner and dashed through the maze-like floor of a Nordstrom's, made all the more challenging by displays that had been shoved around in the panic. But the monster was on the other side of the mall, and neither of us could hear the battle getting any closer as we finally burst free into the February air and a milling horde of mall escapees.

That, at least, seemed to help the kid calm down.

I panted, a little annoyed at the way that Lupin hardly seemed to be breathing hard despite having run most of the way with an uncooperative pre-schooler in her arms. Well, obviously, between us, Lupin would be the one who actually managed to help instead of standing around doing nothing but talking like an idiot.

I shook my head admiringly, and helped Lupin get the child on his feet, kneeling next to him to make eye contact at his level.

"You're okay. We're all safe out here, okay? The monster can't get us."

He trembled, staring back and forth between Lupin and me.

"What's your name?" I asked as gently as I could.

Gradually he stopped crying. He wiped away his tears with one sleeve before quietly mumbling an answer.

"Okay Jim, can you be a big strong boy for me and tell me if your mommy or your daddy was here with you today?" I tried to sound calmer than I felt.

Lupin groaned audibly from behind me. I did my best to tune her out.

"Dad…" he said at length, still fighting back tears.

"Right, well you need to be a big strong boy for your dad, okay! What does he look like?" Slowly I plied the boy for answers.

"I'm going to check inside the mall," Lupin said after she'd heard enough. She was buzzing with a strange impatience. "His dad might be stuck back there looking for him. You stay here with him."

I wanted to tell her not to, that I'd go, but she'd proven the more athletic between us, platform boots and all.

"Just be careful okay? It'd suck if the day had to end in the hospital."

She grinned, "Don't worry, we both know I'll be fine! We'll finish soon and get back to having fun!"

With a meaningful wink that predictably sailed right over my head, Lupin dashed back into the mall.

I spent a little time looking outside, shouting for Jim's dad before, finally, a panicked man, tears streaming down his face, came out of Macy's. Wordlessly, he ran for Jim, pulling the relieved boy into a deep hug.

Lupin wasn't with him.

"Did a girl find you and tell you Jim was out here?" I interrupted his exhausted attempts at thanks as soon as I could. Honestly, I was almost surprised he cared given that he'd lost his son in the first place and made Lupin run back toward danger to find him.

It took him a few moments to process things, the horror of what had nearly happened, to answer, "Y-yes, she said she was going to look for anyone else who'd gotten lost or stuck inside."

A traitorous little part of me wanted to wait. No one really died in these attacks, and, while they destroyed a lot of property, most of the damage ended up coming up from the human stampedes they could cause. That was mostly over, so Lupin would be safe and I could just wait things out instead of getting pulled into another fight on my own. Besides, if I caught up with her, it felt a lot more likely than not that I'd end up captured again and wouldn't that just put her in more danger?

But, I wouldn't be able to forgive myself if I did nothing, and Lupin—the chaotic lonely girl who insisted that being nice was the greediest thing she could be—got hurt.

So I ignored Jim and his dad and dashed back into the mall. I didn't hear any fighting, even as I crept out of the empty Nordstrom's and back into the mall concourse. Hopefully things were settled.

For want of a better option, I made my way toward where the fight had been. If Lupin wasn't there, she was probably safe, and if she was caught up in things, I needed to hurry, as useless as I'd probably be.

I let out the breath I'd been holding and slowed to a walk as I neared the place where the fight had been. Castitas was standing there, unharmed of course, along with the unconscious form of a familiar Hot Topic clerk. Lupin stood, a few doors down, silently facing Castitas. I couldn't see Lupin's face, but Inessa's brow was furrowed. I guess, even empowered magically, Inessa could hardly deal with Lupin, especially after all she'd been up to today.

Inessa's eyes widened as she saw me. In reaction, Lupin spun and waved cheerfully, "Hiya C!" She wasted no time in bouncing toward me.

And Inessa did something utterly incomprehensible. Slowly, mournfully, she lifted her bow and raised it at us.

"Get away from em!" She shouted, as angry as I'd ever seen her.

"W-what, sorry, I—" I froze. I couldn't understand. All I could feel was a terrible, sinking sensation.

Fire coalesced around the drawn bow, an arrow aimed straight for me. How had it come to this? Was Inessa mind-controlled again?

"C!" Inessa shouted urgently, "You have to run!"

Lupin bounded to me, impossibly fast, slipping behind me with preternatural grace. "Don't worry, be a good girl and get out of this without any lasting problems," she whispered kindly, even as her fingers pressed into my neck.

Then she raised her voice and shouted, her tone familiarly mocking in a way that sent shivers down my spine, "Now now, no arrows today, Inessa."

"What are you doing Lupin, Castitas?! This isn't the time for jokes," I wanted to laugh it off, to go back to the way things were this morning and pretend that Inessa had gone with Lupin and none of this was real.

"Ey's Avaritia Wolf!" Castitas denied me that.

I froze, "Just because they're both 'greedy' goths who…" I trailed off as once again the perception filter broke and I could suddenly put together how blindingly obvious that was.

"Oh," I said, without a clue how to process this.

A dark light pulsed at my— or rather Lupin's— feet before surrounding the both of us. When it cleared, I was unchanged, but the fingers around my neck had been replaced by familiar claws.

"Right! Not a step closer, or your little friend gets it."

Begrudgingly, Castitas lowered her bow, Avaritia took a moment to whisper once more in my ear, "Great, just keep playing along and you'll be fine."

I wanted to do something. I didn't know Lupin half as well as I knew Temperance or Ida, much less Inessa, but I was finally starting to like em as a person and now ey was the person who'd held me captive, who'd kidnapped me, who'd tried to turn me into a monster. Ey owed me an explanation.

"I don't want to fight, just… don't hurt C," Inessa, on the other hand, had been crushing on Lupin forever. Lupin, obviously, had no way of knowing that, but I couldn't imagine how hurt Inessa must have felt.

"For real? Rad!" Without waiting for confirmation, Avaritia shoved me to the side.

I stumbled awkwardly, failing to catch my balance and fell to my knees, clearing the stage for the people who actually mattered.

"Why are you doing this?" Castitas asked simply, still pointing her bow at the ground.

Avaritia shrugged, "I'm sure she could tell you."

I had no clue who "she" was, perhaps Michael. Castitas didn't seem surprised at the mention.

Angelic Saint Castitas shook her head, "I mean, I want to hear it from you. Why are you doing this?"

Avaritia's smile brightened, "I guess, what it comes down to, is that I'm a greedy greedy wolf and that I'd rather have a world that's okay with that, than one that'll condemn me for existing."

Castitas winced, "Look, we can help you! We know you're not bad deep down! But this isn't making things better, it just hurts people! You could have hurt so many people today. You could have hurt C, like, a dozen times over!"

"Thanks Castitas," I added sarcastically. Avaritia turned her smirk on me for a half a second, but Castitas gave no response to the undeserved snip.

"Everyone hurts people," Avaritia's answer took a while, and eir tone was surprisingly serious, "Parents hurt their children to make them act 'right'. Corporations deny people life saving medicine for no reason and that's just 'normal'. But when a person does something right in front of you and you can't avert your eyes fast enough, suddenly that makes them the devil, even if it helps in the end and no one really gets that hurt!"

"That's ridiculous! You can't really think that!" Inessa cut Lupin off, looking more broken than when Lupin had blown her off this morning.

Avaritia shrugged, "I don't hate you. You're a good person, sure, but, like, actually a good person." The word was an insult in eir mouth. "But, most of that's because you've had every opportunity to be good. It's easy to avoid gluttony when you have food, to stay hard working when you always get rewarded for working hard, to be purehearted when your family loves you and you're pretty and well-liked."

"That doesn't justify doing evil!" Inessa shouted, "Look, I know what it's like to get pushed around, but that doesn't make it okay to just throw away your morals and do whatever!"

Avaritia glared, flexing eir claws as ey strafed away from me slowly, "I'm not throwing away my morals! I'm saying that shaming someone who's lost everything else for being greedy doesn't help if that's the only thing keeping them going! When you can't be the perfect little angel everyone just loves, you need wrath to stand up for yourself, envy to let you see how much you need the things you don't get."

Castitas put her hands on her hips and shook her head, "But think about how much you're taking from others! If you're in trouble, we can help! You can lean on us! You don't need to be greedy to be happy."

Avaritia snorted, angrier than I'd seen em since ey thought I was a pervert that one time ey kidnapped me.

"Look at C!" ey gestured dramatically, "How long have they been trying to be good, and are they any happier? C's nice, kind, humble and full of patience, and that makes them miserable. They can't figure out what they want even when all of it is so obvious because the world won't let them want in the first place!"

"Thanks, I love being used as a rhetorical point." I shouted back as I struggled to my feet. I should have been terrified, but it was oddly hard to be scared of Lupin, even if ey was Avaritia.

"Shut up C, you know I'm right!" Lupin stuck eir tongue out, but eir eyes didn't leave Castitas.

"Sure, but we're helping them! We're working through it together and we're making it better!" Inessa offered, proving that my efforts to seem like nothing at all was going on and I was doing great were maybe less successful than I had thought.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence Castitas…" I sighed

"Shut up C!" they both yelled; neither facing me.

"You're helping them, what, always get attacked? Stay too nice to actually admit they don't need to earn happiness to want it?"

"Can we please use someone else?" I begged. Neither dignified me with a response.

"I'm protecting him! And we're working on his family situation!" Inessa's words sounded defensive, even to me. And throwing my dad out there like he was a problem to be solved and not… whatever he was to me at this point hurt. I didn't want to be treated like a problem to be solved. Even Avaritia had made a pretense of talking to me about helping instead of just doing things, for all eir understanding of agreement might have been a bit lacking and ey weren't exactly comprehensible about it.

Lupin shrugged, "And have you ever thought that maybe C doesn't want to be protected? That they only go along with everything because they're too afraid to want something and be a 'bad' person? What if they don't want to be a bystander? What if C wants to shine instead of waiting like a good little princess for you to ride to the rescue? That's what virtue does! It tells the people what they're allowed to want! The people who are the good ones, the lucky ones, the ones who want to help everyone be as good as they are, they're only forcing themselves on everyone else!"

Inessa frowned, "That's ridiculous! And C's been my friend for a lot longer than you've known him! He's basically my brother! And everyone needs to be protected sometimes." Inessa paused and took a deep breath, and tried to look at Avaritia without malice in her eyes. "I've needed it."

Lupin shook eir head, and really looked at me, for the first time since ey'd started talking with Inessa.

"Is that right C? Are you fine just hiding behind Inessa? Do you think you'll bloom into something beautiful if you just stand in the background of someone else's story like a good little virtuous friend spouting advice whenever she needs it and waiting for someone else to tell you how to want without sin?"

Inessa's gaze followed Lupin's and her eyes met mine. She'd known me longer; we could share almost anything with each other. And yet, she seemed uncertain, as if she was begging me to reassure her.

"Inessa's right," I said, wondering why it was that Avaritia seemed to be able to give voice to half the words in my heart.

"Hmph!" Avaritia's tone was cold, for all they shot me a knowing wink, as soon as Castitas wasn't looking. "Anyway, I think that's enough answers for one day! Like I said, I don't hate people who can be happy and virtuous. But some people need something else! And someone needs to stand up for them!"

Ey posed dramatically, eir ears standing straight up, one claw raised toward the sky.

Then, without waiting for Inessa to reply, ey gave a bow and brought eir claw down, tearing through the world. With a single purposeful step, Avaritia Wolf was gone.

A few seconds later, the portal sealed itself up naturally, leaving no sign of Lupin's presence.

Both Castitas and I lingered for far longer. She dwelled on the fight before her and the death of her crush. I was consumed with the feeling of the earrings in my pocket poking into my thigh and the strange realization that I'd already decided I would be keeping them. Even though we were together, and thinking about the same things, the space between us somehow felt like an insurmountable gap.



NEXT WEEK ON SHINING VIRTUE ANGELIC HEART!!!

With Avaritia's identity revealed, Lupin has no more reason to hold back. Between Avaritia's schemes during the day, the nameless nocturnal beast and a friend's crisis, the Saints struggle to keep up with their foes' machinations. How will the Saints pull through when attacks come without a pause?!

Tune in for Episode 21: Curtains for Charlie!? The Beast's Name is...

Spoiler: Author's Notes

Apologies for the delays getting this out. As always, thanks to my beta readers @Chehrazad, @NemoMarx and @Gargulec, as well as thanks to @veteranMortal for helping to proofread.

 

[Shadell]

Spoiler: Content Warnings

Abuse, suicidal ideation

These apply to the work as a whole, but this chapter elevates these a bit, so I figured I'd flag things specifically here.

Inessa did a double-take when she saw me outside her door early Thursday morning. She was the one who tended to be up first between us; and she was sensitive enough to the reasons that would drive me out of the comforts of my bed early enough to beat her to it.

"You okay C?" Something in my face must have clued her in. I did my best to feign a smile.

"Dad was a little upset about missing school after all."

Inessa winced, her eyes repeating the question her mouth didn't want to.

"Well, I'm just grounded and he took my phone. It's really not that bad!" I grabbed Inessa's arm and pulled her off the stoop before her parents could notice anything odd and get involved in the inquisition.

"And honestly," I cut in before Inessa could leap to the wrong conclusion, "it's not like he's wrong. Like, he warned me I'd be in trouble if I skipped again any time soon and, well," The truth was dad gave a lot of warnings. Usually he didn't pay enough attention to remember them.

Inessa frowned, "C, it's…" she struggled to find a word.

"It's fine. Honestly, it's almost a relief to know he actually cares enough to do that. You know? Like, I guess he does worry after all?" Actually, as he'd explained, some kind soul at the school administration had apparently decided this happened to me enough to page my teacher to see if I was in class and then try to contact my family as soon as the monster attack made the news.

Inessa's arms wrapping around me pulled me from my reverie and informed me that, perhaps, responding that way had been slightly less reassuring than intended.

"It's fine!" I reiterated, pulling away from the hug. "I just might, uh, not be around too much outside school for the next few weeks unless there's something, like, urgent, and you probably won't be able to grab me by phone for a bit."

"C…"

"It is what it is," I pointed at her, "But, more importantly than that, how are you doing? Yesterday was," I wasn't sure what adjective could be used to describe a day where your crush reacted to an implied confession by ignoring you and asking a friend to hang out and then revealing emself to be a supervillain.

Inessa's face shifted to a look of personal horror.

"C! It's… it's awful," she said quietly.

I forced down the bile that rose to my throat.

Inessa blinked, then shook her head furiously, "N-no, I mean, it's awful I… I've been misgendering em this whole time! Ey probably hate me now and even if ey turns good ey'll never want to date me and…"

She paused, clamping one hand over her mouth, "I-I'm a lesbian, is it transphobic that I have a crush on em?!"

"Inessa," I rubbed the bridge of my nose, "you're kinda amazing, you know?"

She stuck her tongue out at me.

"I mean," she said, the panic dropping from her voice, "I think ey's trying to do the right thing in eir own way, so we'll find a way to get through to Lupin one way or another."

I couldn't help but smile at her. That's right, at the end of it all, Inessa Brandt was a hero. She wouldn't let anything get her down for long. And yet, was it really right to dismiss Avaritia's words that completely?

"If anything," Inessa sighed. "It's Temperance I'm really upset at."

I gave Inessa my best 'hmmmm.' In a way it was a relief that she was bouncing back enough after what had happened that she had the energy to squabble with Temperance. "What happened?" Dad had confiscated my phone and my computer, so I didn't really have a way of staying in the loop for the moment.

"It's just," Inessa sighed, "Okay, she doesn't want to talk about a lot of things with her and Avaritia but, like, she admitted yesterday that she knew and I just…"

Inessa sunk into a sullen silence as I tried futilely to process what she meant.

"She knew?"

"That Avaritia was Lupin!" Inessa groaned, "And she just let me crush on em without saying anything and now she won't even say why she won't talk or when she figured it out or anything that might help us…"

I struggled to pay attention. Temperance had known?! She'd known that Avaritia was reaching out to me, befriending me, that ey'd started that right after ey'd kidnapped me for reasons I could no longer trick myself into thinking were entirely innocuous. And Temperance hadn't done anything to keep us apart or warn me or..

"And," at least Inessa was lost enough in her own train of thought to miss my rising panic, "I know Temperance knows more about Avaritia and, sure she wants to save em more than anyone probably, but, she can trust us, right? We could do so much more to reach em if we'd known that ey was Lupin and now that's gone and…"

"Inessa," I tried to find the words. She turned to me, hope in her eyes, as if I would be able to answer any of that. "W-why did Temperance know Avaritia was Lupin?"

Inessa shrugged, "Well, I guess it's harder to hide if you've known someone that long."

What.

"What?!" my voice rose an octave, dreading Inessa's answer, for all I couldn't stop myself from asking the question.

"Because she was Gula," Inessa spoke slowly, as if explaining a very obvious fact to a particularly forgetful person.

"What." I pretended confusion for as long as I could, for all that I simply couldn't escape the suddenly obvious fact that of course Temperance looked and acted almost exactly like Gula Shark had and yes, had appeared around the time Gula Shark vanished and…

"Why?" I managed, trying desperately not to wonder whether Temperance had known more than just Avaritia's identity.

"Err," Inessa looked at me in confusion. "Why what, what's wrong?"

"Why didn't anyone tell me?" It wasn't like I deserved to hold a grudge against Temperance for what she'd done as Gula. She'd saved my life since then; gone out of her way to help me. She'd been nothing but nice to me in the time after she'd apparently stopped kidnapping me. I couldn't even bring myself to hate Avaritia who'd done so much worse to me. And she'd hidden it.

"Oops," Inessa winced.

And that was it really. "Oops." It just wasn't important enough to make sure I knew that my friend had hurt me in the past and, okay, she'd been Temperance for ages before I officially knew any of the magical girl stuff, as much of a bystander as I was. But this only served to cut apart that sweet little lie that I would ever be a part of the group.

"I uhhh," she said eventually, "I thought she'd already brought it up."

I nearly tripped, trying to ignore my own heartbeat, trying to ignore the cloying scent of cinnamon that I was sure I couldn't actually smell. Temperance had been Gula; she'd known about Lupin. Had she known about Mr. Noir when he was tearing through my chest to pick apart my heart?

I tried to smile as I took a step ahead, "I think I need to be alone for a bit?"

I picked up the pace, leaving Inessa behind with only a hasty "S-see you at lunch," to make sure she didn't worry too much.

---

Lunch usually offered a welcome ritual, a chance to sit at a familiar table and see familiar faces, to be together and chat about anything and nothing. And yet, for all I was in on the secret now, for all they said I was welcome, it was impossible to feel like I belonged with the knowledge that no one had told me firmly in my head.

February 15's lunch table felt like an alien and unfamiliar landscape. The usual patter of daily give and take had faded to an awkward silence, broken only by the sound of Temperance's fork digging into her salad. Ida and Inessa would look to Temperance, then to each other, even as Temperance pretended to ignore them. No one was willing to say what needed to be said. And…

I looked at Temperance as she ate her lunch in silence. She looked like the same odd girl I'd come to trust and like all winter; apparently, the same girl who kept getting me caught up in her schemes before that. Did I really know her at all? And, Inessa and Ida had known and no one had said a thing. Did I belong here at all?

"Temperance," I asked eventually, hating myself for being the one to cave first of all of us. And yet, that cloying scent haunted me still. It wouldn't leave me alone until I knew.

She did not answer, but she did place her fork neatly on her tray and met my eyes, waiting. Dreading?

"Did you know Mr. Noir was…" I didn't finish the question.

Inessa and Ida stopped and turned to face Temperance, Inessa's brow crinkling in horrified realization.

"Sorry," she said carefully, "I thought he might be in the school." She paused for a moment as we stared at her in worry.

"I hadn't found him yet," she clarified belatedly, dropping the tension at the table by an order of magnitude.

Could I believe her? Did I trust Gula Shark? I shook my head. I didn't deserve to doubt her. She'd saved my life how many times? Done her best to help me figure myself out and, for all she was constantly making fun of me, always seemed to include me as if I belonged with the group in a way that even Inessa didn't quite manage.

And she'd lied.

"But you knew about Lupin." Ida didn't make eye-contact as she spoke, a little too afraid to sharpen the words into a genuine accusation.

"Yes," Temperance admitted, as if that was all she had to say. As if that was enough.

"We," Inessa's voice shook. "We want to help Avaritia. You can trust us!"

"I do." The words were barely more than a whisper, lifting a silent burden that Temperance did not bother to explain.

"So why didn't you tell us?"

I retreated from the exchange, realizing that I'd started a conversation where I didn't really belong. At least, Temperance hadn't known about Mr. Noir. I shouldn't have asked. Of course she wouldn't have hidden him. Of course Avaritia was different, of course she had her reasons.

It hurt anyway.

---

Friday morning found Inessa waiting at the stairs outside my house. Her face told me that she'd overheard what dad and I'd said over breakfast; we'd been loud. I hadn't had any good dreams in the past few days to lift my mood and Dad was…

"Sorry about that," I managed, forcing a smile. "It's really not as bad as it sounds between us."

Inessa gave me a look.

"He's trying," I said defensively. I was still upset at Inessa for what she hadn't told me. "Since Mom left, it's been… It hasn't been easy for him, you know?"

"C," her voice was strained. "It hasn't been easy for you and you weren't the one shouting. You can rely on me." She flexed one arm, patting a nonexistent bicep. "I'm a hero, you know? It's what I do! Just say the word and we'll get you out."

That should have been reassuring. She was a hero. She was my hero. And yet, I didn't need to run from my problems, to stay weak and protected and be a burden on everyone around me. No, Inessa couldn't understand that. She'd gotten strong, strong enough to face herself in the mirror, strong enough to look after everyone else too. She didn't need me anymore, didn't really understand what it was like to look at yourself and find nothing worth keeping, nothing at all except the bitter thorny darkness. Avaritia had put it in terms I could understand, for all she was obviously in the wrong. I loved Inessa like a sister, I always would, but…

"I mean, sneaking out of being grounded probably wouldn't make things better when I went back." I shook my head. She couldn't be offering more than that. I couldn't let her be offering more than that.

Inessa reached an arm out toward me, then froze awkwardly. "That's not what—" slowly the arm fell to her side. "Right. Just, we're here for you, okay?"

I struggled not to bristle.

"You'll never understand Lupin," the words were mumbled quietly enough that Inessa couldn't possibly have heard them, and enough of a nonsequitur that she'd never guess. And yet, some wicked little part of me wanted to throw that in her face.

"What?" she asked, confused.

"Sorry," I muttered, "Can we change the topic?"

Inessa looked to her feet as we walked toward school in a sullen silence.

"Have you patched things up with Temperance yet?" I asked eventually. They would. Both of them were good people, bright people, people who deserved to outshine us all. Temperance had to have had her reasons. Any conflict between them was the kind of thing that would just leave them even stronger at the end.

I let Inessa take the opening to complain through the walk to school. At least she was kind enough to pounce on the invitation.

Inessa was amazing and inspiring and right. She was impossibly good and I knew, better than anyone, that she hadn't always had that come easily to her. She'd been lost for a while too. But, I didn't think she ever could have understood why Avaritia's promises still sung in the corners of my heart.

Inessa had never really risked disappointing her family until they stopped loving her. She'd never, not really, had to look at herself and know how awful she was; while here, I—Avaritia might stand to lose everything if ey gave up on sin. Inessa was vibrant and bright and beautiful as soon as she'd decided to blossom, she couldn't understand what it meant to have nothing in your heart that deserved to be spoken in the light of day. And that didn't make it fair or right or okay to do evil; but, it made Inessa's shallow efforts to cross that gap sting. She'd had everything she needed to push her darkness away. How was she to understand those who found some solace in theirs?

I half-expected Lupin to accost us at the gates. If ey had, Inessa would have yelped and hid and shown that, beneath all her courage and justice, so much about her hadn't changed. I think, perhaps, she wanted the same. She certainly looked as disappointed as I did when we passed undisturbed into the school building.

I spent the morning dreading lunch with the certainty that I couldn't do anything to take back the last few days. And yet, I was only half-relieved to find the usual table empty. Temperance missing alone would have set off alarm bells, but there was only one reason why they'd all be gone at once. Somewhere, someone needed a hero.

Really, by the time they were done fighting, Inessa and Temperance would have probably cleared the air. That's how it seemed to go. That was good, things could go back to normal, these problems could be dismissed and everyone could welcome Temperance back into the fold.

I was worried, of course. I always was, but even I knew that was silly. They always won; that's what they did.

They weren't back by the end of the school day. I lingered at the gates, for all I was under strict orders to march straight home. Dad had confiscated my phone. I wouldn't be able to know they were safe until Monday unless I did something and hoping they returned was the best I'd been able to think of. Dad probably wouldn't even notice I was late.

---

Dad noticed I was late. Or at least, he was home when I arrived and he'd checked the clock when he heard the door.

He shouted for me from the living room. I debated ignoring him, or just turning around and leaving again. But that'd just make it worse when I came back, so I dropped my bag by the door, shrugged out of my jacket and trudged over to face the reaper.

"Hey," I offered.

He snorted and struggled to his feet. My dad, large enough that he was used to being imposing by default, loomed over me with an air of barely restrained anger. The beer belly he'd spent the past few years working on did nothing to lessen the menace he could exude.

I glanced past him to the row of empty beer bottles on the living room table next to a crumpled tie. Work had gotten out early then, and he'd come home and started drinking. It must not have been a good day.

And a bad day meant that the best thing to do was bite my tongue as he spoke about respect and obedience and try my best to listen and apologize where appropriate.

"I'm sorry," I said for the dozenth time. "Inessa was missing from the end of school and I was worried, so I stuck around to—" I didn't get a chance to finish. Excuses were bad. His mood was worse. Today those trumped his usual approval of my connection with Inessa.

And, it's not like he could understand that she might really have been in danger. To him it would seem like silly worrying, wouldn't it? I tried to focus on that and not the echoes of the offer Inessa hadn't dared to clarify that morning. I couldn't do what mom had done to us. That was the limit.

Altogether, aside from the fact that he was already worked up and the earlier parts of the week had left him angrier than usual at me, it was a pretty normal talk for us. At least, it was the kind of normal we'd had for the past few months.

And then I messed it up. Perhaps I was just too tired, perhaps the week's revelations and betrayals had left me too drained to remember the little pangs of sympathy for our shared guilt over mom. Maybe I thought, with all his talk of what a real man would do, that he'd actually respect it if I stood my ground. Whatever prompted it, I'd have usually known better.

"Okay, I'm sorry." I took a deep breath and tried not to quiver. "I'm still a little worried about Inessa. Could I maybe head over to her parents' for dinner? I'll come right back as soon as we're done." I tried to keep a neutral tone of voice, but something of my anger leaked through.

Of course he refused. Of course he took it as defiance. Of course I should have backed down and left well enough alone.

Of course I shouldn't have doubled down by turning my back on him while he was still talking, I shouldn't have tried to storm out before he'd let me go. I shouldn't have ignored him when he ordered me to turn back. None of that was how you managed him. I knew better.

Something flew past my head, missing me by a few feet and shattering against a wall. I stared at it in confusion, slowly realizing that it was the remnant of a beer bottle. Dumbly, I turned to stare. He'd yelled, he'd knocked things over, but he'd never thrown anything, not like that. I'd told myself he wasn't a violent man a hundred times.

Maybe if I'd left then, I'd have talked myself out of understanding what had happened. But I turned to look first, and I saw the confusion and horror in his eyes, the way he stared at his own hands lost. And I knew it. He hadn't thrown the bottle to make me pay attention. He'd meant to hit me and missed.

I stumbled to the door, and took one last look back.

"Fine then," he slurred, "be like your mom."

I ran.

---

I don't really know how I got to the park, or how long I stayed there, sitting on a bench, staring at an empty playground. At some point it had gotten dark. I hadn't grabbed my jacket on the way out, another dumb mistake. The freezing February night felt almost soothing, a welcome distraction from the void that sat where my emotions should have been.

It was a little nice to imagine dissolving into the wind, letting it freeze me and shatter me down into nothing so I wouldn't hurt anyone, wouldn't have to keep trying to make things work. Or maybe I could just start walking. I'd have to send a few postcards at first, to let them know not to worry. I wouldn't be like mom. But they'd forget me soon enough and then I could just vanish inch by inch and then I wouldn't have to worry about how much I wished I wasn't everything I was.

Or perhaps I could just go to sleep and skip the part where I woke up. My dreams let me be someone else, someone powerful, someone who could still carve a place for herself even if the world had no use for her. Something about that seemed real enough to jolt me out of the fugue. I couldn't say how I knew, but it was an option if only I would choose it. It was tempting.

Inessa wouldn't forgive me.

No, they were good people. All of them, even Avaritia, would blame themselves if I vanished. I imagined mom leaving. I'd waited for her to come back at first, even fought with dad over it. I'd imagined something horrible had happened to her, and blamed myself for thinking it. Then I'd started to blame myself, my dad, her, then blamed myself even more for blaming anyone else but me.

It was agony to have someone vanish. It was a self-indulgent delusion to think that any of these silly little daydreams would be any kinder to them.

So, I wiped a few freezing tears out of my eyes and started walking. A boy shouldn't have been crying to start with of course, but that was his rule, so it didn't matter.

---

The neighborhood felt different at night. Maybe I was different. The quiet and the dark lent it an air of eerie peace that helped me gather myself. I was barely sniffling by the time I reached their doorstep, careful not to so much as look down the street.

Nothing happened the first time I smashed my fist against the door. The second set brought light on in a nearby room, but no one came for what felt like an eternity.

Mrs. Brandt, dressed in a nightgown, cracked open the door, just as I resolved to try one last time. She was already starting to grumble as she looked through, before she recognized me in the thin sliver of light and the storm clouds fled from her face, only to return a few seconds later as she started to wonder why I was there in what couldn't have been a good state at what had to be a late hour.

The door swung open, almost hitting me on the way and Mrs. Brandt practically dragged me inside, offering soft comforting little lies all the while. In what felt like an instant, I found myself sitting numbly at the dining room table, nursing a mug of hot cocoa as the sun broke over the horizon and Inessa's parents continued to fuss over me.

Mrs. Brandt told me—though I didn't think I'd shared anything about what happened—that I wouldn't be going back. Mr. Brandt told me not to think about the future, to spend the day thinking and taking care of myself. He was there to listen. Mrs. Brandt was there to 'sort things out.'

I wondered if this made him right, at the end. But I remembered his face in the moment he'd said that. I gave them a list of all the things I thought I wanted: my phone, my laptop, my jacket, a small tin containing a few birthday cards and mementos and, hidden at the bottom, a pair of earrings I hadn't been able to throw away.

At least, I told them that he hadn't actually hit me; they had to know that. I couldn't go back anymore, sure. But it was somehow absolutely important that they knew that there hadn't really been an escalation; that, even by accident, he hadn't crossed that line.

Inessa and her dad both offered to talk. Once I'd managed to make it clear that wasn't happening, Inessa and I ended up huddling on her couch, watching torrents of Starlight Princess Orion to distract both of us from our feelings. I didn't say much, but it was almost nice to listen to Inessa slip into the familiar rants about how much better the show would be if only Dark Prince Abyssos was a princess instead.

"You know," she said as the day was saved and everyone drifted into a happy ending once again, "I don't know what happened, but…" she took a deep breath, "I'm glad you found the strength to leave, C."

I wanted to object, to let her know that whatever strength I had had been spent coming back, not leaving, to tell her that I was almost like mom after all and that no one should praise that. But it wasn't worth it, so I grumbled something indistinct instead.

"I mean, you're so strong and I know this is hard. So, umm, just know that we're here to help you make it through this. My folks, Ida, even Temperance and," she took a deep breath, "things will get better. Okay?"

I wondered about that. I couldn't imagine what better would be like, not really. Maybe, in time, things would scar over with dad. It felt wrong to hope for that, but a part of me did anyway. But what then? Did I have a goal? A passion? Was there anything better than silly little dreams and the selfish fear of hurting others to justify existing in the end?

Inessa wrapped an arm around me and gently stroked my head. On the television, Princess Orion was already getting into another misadventure she'd be able to resolve perfectly within fifteen minutes or so. Ridiculous.

A part of me wanted to tell Inessa exactly how hollow all her optimism felt. It wasn't worth the energy.

Inessa had to leave in the afternoon; apparently Temperance had run into a lifeguard who had been turned into a Resinner and I could hardly have Inessa skip a fight for my sake. It was just as well, I'd finally grown nearly tired enough to sleep. If anything could help me, it would be that.

I dreamed of soaring through the sky, of being selfish enough to shout, to lay all my problems at everyone else's feet and lay claim to all the strength and beauty I didn't deserve and wasn't allowed to want. In dreams, the night air was more than a silent offer, it was a constant companion, as reliable as my wolf. In dreams I was not alone. In dreams I could abandon past and future and just exist in one moment of adrenaline to the next.

I could steal Inessa's fire and throw it at Temperance for daring to put all these thoughts in my head about what I could never be, and for being all those things and having the world itself acknowledge her.

I could break Ida's balance with jets of water for daring to keep trying until she made it. A bit of shattered glass wouldn't have broken her resolve. It wouldn't have happened to her anyway. She was tough and strong and good and any of her anxieties rang hollow to my ears. And of course that wasn't true, and of course I wasn't allowed to even think such thoughts. But I was dreaming, and no one could blame you for being petty in a dream.

I could bury Inessa in a wave of disrupted earth for daring to have the courage to face herself; for being beautiful both inside and out when all I could manage in a dream was a pitiful mockery of the former. I could crush her here for having a family that wouldn't stop caring, that would accept a useless shell of a boy into their home just because he was hurting.

Mostly, I tried to crush her for managing to be the kind of person who was able to keep loving me when I didn't deserve it.

Of course they fought back; they pushed, and refused to bow to the dark. No matter how high above them silent wings bore me through the night, they still sent me tumbling back to earth. The pain too was good.

Tonight Avaritia didn't fight. Ey knew, for all we couldn't talk, that I needed to fight alone, even if it broke me. So I fought and sang until there was nothing left to scream and I pushed them to the brink. Only then did I let them rout me into my partner's comforting arms.

The battle was lost, but the night remained ours. I couldn't understand eir words, but Avaritia's grin as ey lead me through the dark told it had only just begun.

---

I woke up on the floor next to Inessa's couch, feeling almost well enough to be okay existing for all my body had developed a number of aches.

It was still dark outside, and not even Mr. Brandt was awake yet. Someone had left a bag of clothing,a laptop case and a smartphone on the couch. The phone was dead of course, and it seemed like he had forgotten to send a charger.

I tried to stand, and winced instead. Spending most of an afternoon and all night sleeping on a couch had left me achingly sore.

So I dragged my body into a steaming hot shower and left feeling like a decent facsimile of a human being.

I hated the silence back home; the fact that it was better than the alternative only reminded me how much had changed. In Inessa's house, the silence felt peaceful, a welcome intermission in the noise of a vibrant everyday life. A house with that kind of silence didn't deserve me.

I looked at my things and thought, once more, of simply walking away. Of course Inessa and her family might have blamed themselves if I did that. No, whatever little choice had ever been there had died the second I found myself at Inessa's door.

Instead, I fished out my laptop and spent a few mindless hours browsing the net, reading silly stories that could never be and wishing the world could just pass me by.

Eventually Mr. Brandt rose to handle breakfast. He was unusually subdued and I wasn't sure if he was endeavoring to give me whatever peace I could find or if the early mornings were simply a quiet time for him to ready himself for the day. Either way, Inessa was up soon after. Even managing to look like she'd lost a duel against Avaritia in her sleep, my childhood friend was hardly as serene a presence as her father.

"W-what happens next?" I asked after Inessa's mom stumbled to the breakfast table and secured her first coffee of the day.

"I mean," I added before anyone could respond. "I'm grateful. This is, umm," something ached, "More than I deserve. But, I can't just impose on you forever." And he hadn't hit me and he'd looked sad when he'd realized what he'd done. He wasn't… Maybe something could still be saved there.

Inessa's parents looked to each other. "Charlie," Mrs. Brandt spoke first. "You aren't imposing on us. You're welcome here as long as you want."

I wanted to believe them. But they'd get sick of me sitting around uselessly sooner or later. I'd get sick of taking advantage of them just as quickly. It would be better for all of us if I didn't stay long enough for anything like that to happen.

"As for now," Inessa's parents looked to each other, "You're 18," Mrs. Brandt confirmed. "No one can make you go back."

"It's okay if you don't know what's happening. This would be a lot for anyone to go through," Mr. Brandt smoothly interjected. "Take a few days to settle. We're here whenever you feel ready to talk."

I smiled at that. If only it could be so easy.

--

I would probably have spent the day moping again, but, as many Resinners have discovered, Inessa Brandt is a force of nature. And she was convinced that 'getting some air would be good for us.'

And that meant that we soon ended up sitting in the park nursing paper cups full of hot coffee. The day was cold enough that no one else was there and it lent an air of familiarity to the strange new status quo.

"I came here on Friday, you know?" I laughed a little as we sat down.

"You did?" Inessa asked, confused.

"Before I decided that I would go to you after all." Inessa sucked in a breath of air at that and I winced. I hadn't meant it to carry any emotion at all, much less condemnation at her choice of venue.

"Do you want to go somewhere else?" she asked, fiddling awkwardly with her phone.

"Anywhere's fine," I tried to give her a reassuring smile. It probably didn't work. We huddled together and drank our coffee and said nothing and of all things, that wasn't so bad.

"C," Inessa asked eventually. "What would you have done if you didn't come to us when… whatever it was happened?"

"I don't know," I lied. "I guess I just couldn't think. I started moving and I couldn't stop and then, well," I glanced around at the park. It was hard to admit that last Friday's misadventures meant something to me.

Unfortunately, any such musings were cut off by a familiar greeting.

"C." Temperance's voice was unmistakable and I bit my lip. I wanted to be angry at her still, but mostly I simply didn't have the energy to care that she'd lied or to resolve things and make friends again.

I craned my head around to find her advancing on us, Ida steadfastly in tow.

"How are you?" Temperance asked.

I shrugged, "Hanging in there. You?"

Inessa must have set me up. It was just like her to meddle, to think that patching things up with friends would be the boost I needed to make it through the week after everything. I wanted to run; I didn't really have the energy for that either.

"I'm sorry," Temperance said, sounding legitimately apologetic for once in her life. "I," she froze. This was, perhaps, the third time I'd seen her actually uncertain of herself. "I couldn't tell you before you knew and I wanted to help somehow to make amends and.."

I didn't need this. I couldn't handle this.

"It's fine," I said with a smile. "I'm sure you were trying to find the time to talk about being Gula and then one thing led to another and… no one else wanted to say it for you." Perhaps that was true for Temperance. I didn't know, but Inessa had all but admitted to simply forgetting. I didn't want to think about that, to remember everything else that I hated in my life beyond my abusive father.

Temperance sagged in relief. "Sorry," she said again. Then she paused and looked at me. Something like joy flashed across her face.

"I do like the earrings though." She sounded pleased with that, as if she'd observed some strange fact that made any sense at all.

"Temperance, not today. I'm never going to wear—" I tugged my ears to demonstrate, only to find my hand touching against hard metal. "Thanks. I just," had no idea what was happening. " I needed the change." The park was shaking and I was glad I was sitting or else I might have lost my balance and broken the illusion that I was remotely in control.

Inessa looked at me in confusion. Temperance seemed relieved to hear this, as if getting earrings would somehow change the fact that my dad was abusive after all and not just a drunk, as if that would change the fact that I'd taken the same way out mom had no matter how many times I swore I wouldn't.

No, I refused to feel giddy or excited or terrified or anything at all over sitting in a park wearing what I somehow knew was a pair of green apple studs.

"They're almost as bright as your eyes," Inessa noted, feigning comprehension. I found myself unable to breathe as we looked at each other and slowly realized what that meant. My eyes were not supposed to be a bright green.

"C," Inessa's voice went from fake reassurance to very real worry. I thought of a green haired girl in all the mirrors in my dreams. I tried not to hope. Even after all this, I wasn't allowed to hope it was real. "Do you have any idea what's going on?"

Lupin had picked out the earrings, specifically for me. Lupin had called me eir partner, eir 'bestie' overnight, right after Avaritia had failed to make me into an ally, right after my dreams had started.

They couldn't be real. They weren't allowed to be real. If they were real, I could be beautiful and strong enough to matter. If they were real, I had hurt my friends again and again because deep down I….

I envied them.

I envied them. And not in the passing way, I'd often admitted. Deeper than admiration or love or friendship, I envied them so much it hurt to be in their presence. We were all flawed, we all had our weaknesses. And yet, they were chosen to take the stage; to stand, to grow, to help others. Why did they get to be the kind of people who were worthy to become something more? Why did I have to remain this sad disgusting boy whose own father saw him for a worthless bug?

"I think," I said slowly. There was only one choice really. I could sense it now, another of the lies I'd told myself crumbling down around me. The power had always been there, growing, spreading, changing me inch by inch to make me everything I admired.

And yet.. It wasn't real, not yet. It was enough to let me act in dreams, to twist my perception enough that I could lie to myself, to let me put up all the walls I needed to draw on its power, but, my sin didn't own me. I could feel it inside me and it was clear. There was no real point to sin if it wasn't something you chose. The little games it had let me play? The teasers, the tastes, the way I let it filter my view of everything so I could deny just enough.

Inessa had called me half-formed. She wasn't wrong.

I could tell them, I realized. That was the right thing to do. I could refuse that dark little emotion at my core and let the saints exorcize me and clear the world of one Beast. That's what a good person would have done.

And yet, I thought of the dreams, of how I actually got to feel good about myself for once in them, about how I could be something enough that it didn't matter if I didn't belong anywhere. I thought of the last time I'd been in this very park, how much I'd fantasized about the other choice. This was a fair compromise wasn't it? It was wrong, but, they couldn't blame themselves for this.

All I had to do was avoid naming my sin, avoid claiming it, and it couldn't be real.

"Oh," I rubbed the back of my head. "Umm," on reflection, telling your friends that you, an ordinary boy, happen to have been the evil monster masquerading as a clone of your best friend from childhood who was a girl was awkward for more reasons than the whole part about beating them up a bunch.

"I think I'm, umm, that mystery beast," I scratched the back of my head.

Temperance was the fastest to react, slipping back into a wary position, toying with a bracelet on her wrist, no doubt ready to transform.

Ida was only slightly slower, positioning herself in front of the blue haired girl, poised to buy time, to take the hits if I decided to, once again, attack the only people who cared about me in the world.

Inessa leaned toward me instead, "Are you sure?" She knew I was hanging by a thread. And yet, she alone didn't even think I might hurt her.

I stood up and took a step away, prompting Ida and Temperance to tense, then spun to face the others.

"I am," I admitted. Now that I knew, I could feel the taste of envy's flower on the tip of my tongue. The words were there, I had only to speak them to let it bloom in truth.

"We can help you." Inessa didn't ask if I'd been in control, didn't ask if I'd chosen to make monsters, to fight against the Saints. It must have seemed impossible, that poor pathetic little C would do any of those things of his own initiative.

"Let us bring you to Michael. We'll figure it out and keep you safe. I promise, we'll protect you C," I think I might have let her; if she had judged me a little, if she had looked and seen a person who wanted so badly to fall. But no, even now she was only talking at the phantom of a better friend.

Inessa never doubted me, never thought she might need to listen, never saw me as something that might not want to be protected the way I'd once offered to protect her. To her, I would always be nice, safe C: a brother, a font of moral support, a victim. She couldn't see the part of me that needed those dreams.

"I don't need protection," I said, and in saying so edged ever so much closer to making it true. "I don't deserve compassion either. Deep down, all I've ever been, all I'll ever be is the jealous bat watching from the rafters, too scared to step into the light of day. But that jealousy is my strength, my drive, my gift."

I spun in place, finding myself laughing freely. If only I'd known how good it felt to let go, to say the things you weren't allowed to feel.

Then I took a step toward Inessa and, gently as I could, shoved her away from me. "It's enough to let me pretend to be as strong and as beautiful as any of you."

I smiled at her and took a great weight off my chest. "It calls for me, and I don't want you to save me. You can't save me from my envy, from Invidia."

Something inside me writhed in joy and I found I somehow knew exactly what came next. I raised one hand and dragged it across my face. "Verdant winds of Invidia, change me!"

For one moment, I seemed to stand in a hall of envy's mirrors reflecting every inadequacy: too tall and clumsy, too ugly, too weak, too unlovable, too unmotivated. C couldn't change; couldn't be anything anyone would want to be, anyone anyone would really want to have. But envy would turn each inadequacy into a font of strength.

So what if I was too big and clumsy? I could just imitate Ida's grace. I could borrow Temperance's stature and poise. So what if I was weak? I could mimic Inessa's power and beauty. So what if I was pathetic; I could steal the bearing of a Saint.

Miasma wrapped around me, buffeting me as it scoured away everything unneeded, everything of Charleton in favor of something softer and smaller and prettier and perfect.

And then it condensed into soft fabric. My hands, stretched toward Inessa in welcome, found themselves covered in long black gloves. A skirt, black with green highlights copied the exact style the Saints wore. Envy could do nothing less. I toyed with the bow on my chest (and tried not to pay attention to the fact that I actually had a chest) and then nearly lost my balance as the dark left a pair of dark wings on my back.

The Saints had little feathery things, more ornament than not. Mine, flared out as the transformation left them, were a thing of another tier entirely. These were mine. The mark of envy's beast. No matter how much the Saints outshone the sun, I would reflect their light and rule the night.

I smiled at them, tongue flicking across one of my fangs.

"With a jealous scream to shatter the night, Invidia Bat has arrived!" I let my hand fall to my side, dipping low into a curtsy and wrapping myself in my wings.

"Nice to meet you."

Spoiler

A/N: In case anyone is wondering where the next episode preview is, they obviously had to run the episode through the credits and use the time for Invidia's transformation instead.

I'd like to thank the random trans girls I bully into looking over this in advance, @NemoMarx, @Chehrazad and @Gargulec who have helped this work be so much better than it was in its initial form and are endlessly patient with me constantly poking them about this project.

I'd also like to thank Chirivulpes, Vyria and RooibosChai for leaving a lot of good comments on an earlier draft and helping with editing here. Some in thread have wondered where to get more transfics and all are really great authors of this content!