CONTENT WARNINGS

None

If I dreamt after passing out in the grass, I don’t remember it. Perhaps I would have spoken with Holton again, or drawn the parallels between how I’d broken out of our shared dream and how I’d escaped back into reality from the abyss, or connected the gargantuan hunk of driftwood to the towering forest beyond the beach.

But instead, I just slept. I slept through finally being extracted from the inferno and taken back to Lighthouse Tower, through the remainder of the evacuation, through whatever the leaders of Todai and Hikanome had to say to one another in the immediate wake of the disaster. I slept through the inferno’s collapse and cleanup and through the initial news cycle for the biggest magical event since last week’s incident at Thunder Horse. I slept as Todai set me up in Ebi’s medical ward on the eighteenth floor, cleaned the awful dust-bunny-gunk off me, and scanned my flesh and bones for the changes my Flame had effected.

All told, I rested unconscious for three days—and that meant actually three days of healing this time, no bio-accelerant fields for me like I’d been provided when Hina had first brought me here. Ebi and Ai had been wary of kickstarting more substantial mutations in my body, and given that I had actually been mostly unharmed outside of the self-inflicted overexertion, they just hooked me up to an IV drip and let me sleep until my body decided I’d recovered enough to wake.

Thus I awoke to a familiar sight, the same as my first moments of consciousness in Japan hardly two weeks prior: a hospital room. Not quite the same one as last time, but perhaps adjacent. As I blinked blearily and rubbed the gunk out of my eyes, I was pleased to see my phone on the little tray table next to the bed, and my spear leaning against it. I reached out to feel the haft, reassuring myself that it was still there. We’d need to redo my tattoo.

“Don’t try anything funny.”

Ebi had been standing very still on the other side of my bed, and my still-booting-up brain had skipped right over her as I’d taken in my surroundings. I would have jumped a little in surprise if I was more awake and less pumped full of drugs.

“…Hi, Ebi. What—” I yawned. “What constitutes funny?”

“Pumping yourself so full of green ripple you turn into an avocado?”

I glanced down at my arms. Still human skin down there, even noticeably healthier-looking, less red and raw than the mangled results of my magical epilation. Vaguely disappointing, though not because I dreamt of becoming a pitted fruit. “Think I’m good on that front.”

“Time will tell.” She stood attentively over me, arms crossed, galloping her delicate fingers on the carbon-fiber shell of her upper arm. “How’s your pain?”

“Zero,” I confirmed happily. I was incredibly comfortable, no aching pain in my foot, none of the frostbite I’d inflicted on my hands, not even the ghosts of aches from whatever I had done to my muscles in those bursts of superhuman speed. “You’re giving me the good stuff.”

“Oh, yeah. Dipping into Amane’s supply.”

“I take it she’s alright?”

“Eh.” Ebi’s digital face twisted in annoyance. “She’s fine. Awake. Mobile and healthy as she can get. There was a spooky moment when we were getting her set up in here, but weather’s been clear enough outside of that. She’s a few rooms down from you.”

“But?”

“But her prostheses and mantle are fucked for the time being. Self-inflicted, I’m told.”

“Something like that,” I winced, feeling guilty even though Amane had made it quite clear that she knew the risk. “Glad to hear she’s alright, though. Yuuka?”

“Damn, you actually give a shit?”

I mustered the energy to glare at the robot.

She sighed, which sounded suspiciously like an audio clip recorded directly from Alice. It was a little weird that I could identify the origin. “She’s the most messed up of the three of you, but she’s alright. Some broken ribs, a lot of bruising, a really messed-up bunch of hemorrhages around her eye, and right now, we’ve got her on the same red sensitivity alert as Amane, but nothing that won’t heal. I’ve had her on eightfold.”

I looked up at the ceiling, processing this information. I let myself be relieved she was fine, mostly past the point of bad blood after the life-or-death circumstances we’d shared—but the same sentiment did not extend to the person who’d roughed her up so badly. The last thing I’d seen of my stalker had been Alice embracing her and calling her sister. Was it all water under the bridge now, despite the fact that I’d traded blows with Takagiri to stop her from killing Yuuka? I frowned.

“Where’s Takagiri? Uh, Kimura? You know what I mean.”

“Too many questions for somebody on morphine,” Ebi deflected breezily, waving her hand.

My frown deepened at the evasion. I was still feeling sluggish, but the comfortable kind, and I wasn’t exhausted or distracted by pain, so I had the wherewithal to briefly run through the information revealed to me before I’d passed out.

Alice was trans. So was Takagiri. Both were surprising. Alice had seemed forgiving, and it was easy to imagine Hikanome would be much less so, given that they’d already labeled Kimura a traitor, and from Ebi’s response…

“Ebi, by any chance, is she here? On this very floor? You’d tell me if she were, right? Because we’re such good friends?”

“…Noooo,” Ebi lied, clasping her hands behind her back. “Did you know that we’re footing the bill for the damage to the park? It’s over three billion—hey, no, stoppit—”

She rushed forward to hold me down as I tried to sit up. That turned out to be mostly unnecessary; pain-free though I was, my muscles still felt like jelly, and I only really managed a sideways half-flop. I wiggled back into a more dignified position to address her seriously.

“Ebi.”

“Ezzen.”

“She attacked me. All this?” I waved weakly to indicate my state and the Radiances somewhere down the hall. “Her fault. She was trying to kidnap me! And you just have her posted up the next room over, like she won’t do it again?”

“She won’t,” came Alice’s voice from the door.

I looked to see her leaning into the doorway. She was wearing one of Amane’s hoodies and a ragged, irritated expression on her face…and not much else. Probably some very short shorts hidden under the hem, but it was clear she was not dressed to go out or look pretty. She was pressing an ice pack against her forehead.

My pique softened slightly. “You okay? Uh—”

“Fine. Takagiri isn’t a threat to you anymore.”

That sounded a little morbid. “…You didn’t kill her, did you?”

“We’re not killing her, Ezzen.”

I winced. “Not what I meant. Uh—I’m glad she’s alive, really. But does she have to be here?”

Alice hesitated, glancing briefly down the hall, before sighing. “Ebi, clear out, and soundproofing on, please.”

“You got it.” The robot walked out of the room. I noticed she didn’t have feet at the end of her shins; the leg just tapered to a point. Were those new?

Once she left and closed the door behind her, Alice grabbed the visitor’s chair from the corner of the room and hauled it to my bedside. She dropped herself in the seat sideways and leaned against the back, rubbing her head and wincing.

“We’re holding onto her while she recovers and things simmer down a little. It’s a mess out there.”

“And you know she’s not going to attack me again…how, exactly?”

“Because she’s on our side against Sugawara—ow, fuck,” she groaned, shifting the ice pack around.

My worry and anger about Takagiri were derailed by Alice’s pain. She’d been mantled up for nearly the entire fight, which meant it probably wasn’t a battle wound. More likely, given her magical expenditure, it was her body itself.

“Dragon-ka?” I hazarded.

“…Some.”

“Say more.” I sat up a little. This was something I could solve, maybe, make myself useful.

“It’s…my tail’s growing,” she sighed. “And I’ve got a killer headache, though I don’t know how much of that to attribute to some new mutation versus just…all this. The Ministry’s been breathing down our necks about damages and the fucking cleanup and Miyoko’s been very suggestive that they’ll sell us out to the Peacies if we don’t, which I can only hope she’ll turn around on once we explain Takagiri’s situation—” The air on her side of the bed was starting to heat up. “—plus the press wants Hina to make a statement—which I’m absolutely not letting her do—and we have to delay all the ‘make a splash’ summer merch because Christ that would not go over well and the guys I sent to see what the hell’s going on with Sugawara have gone missing and it’s all…sorry,” she muttered, tamping down the warmth before it could flare any higher. “I’m overworked.”

“Uh. You’re fine.” She was very much not fine in the more general sense, but to be honest, I’d only been half-paying attention to most of the rant; I was much more comfortable trying to figure out what her headache might entail mutations-wise than grappling with the political quagmire Todai now found itself in. “Horns?”

“Fuck me, I hope not.” She rubbed her face with her free hand, trying to regain her composure. “That’s what you’re stuck on? Not the public relations debacle?”

“Trying to stay in my lane,” I shrugged. It beat talking about Takagiri’s presence…or Hina. “I wanna…help with what I can.”

“Yes, fair enough, that does sound more your speed. Er—I appreciate it. And sorry for the language, really, it’s just all such a mess.” She looked at me more seriously, a little more of her public face reconstituting. “Don’t feel obligated to help us clean this up—I wouldn’t blame you for having had enough of this by now, honestly. I understand if you just want out.”

I eyed her. “Are…you saying I should leave?”

Did they want me out of their hair entirely now, after being essentially the trigger for the entire event? Had I finally crossed the line from asset to liability, and now Alice was subtly trying to hint at me that I should take my leave and head off for the Spire before the political situation disintegrated further?

She shook her head hurriedly, then flinched and moved the ice pack to the other side of her head. “Ow—no, absolutely not! You’re welcome here, always.” A curious look came into her eyes as she met mine. “Do…you understand why?”

I looked at her blankly.

She sighed. “Okay, no, I guess not.” She shifted in the seat. “Let’s start from the beginning. Where I probably should have, honestly, instead of giving it the walkabout for two weeks.” She cleared her throat. “Ahem. I’m trans.”

“Right.” We stared at each other for a moment as I searched for something else to say. This was a harrowing, precarious topic, and regardless of how this factored into Todai harboring somebody who’d attacked me, I felt obligated to be respectful. Star would have taken my head off otherwise. “Um. Since when?”

So much for being respectful. I would have to bury myself somewhere far from civilization.

“Um,” she fumbled, also caught off guard by my inability to hold a conversation. “Since…since two years before the firestorms. A few months after I met Hina,” she clarified. “But it starts before that, back when I was just a gross little larva of a person, barely sentient and stuck on the wrong side of a thick eggshell. You know?” She cringed, then raised a hand to forestall my idiotic reply. “It’s just…okay. Once upon a time, I was a boy who didn’t like mahou shoujo.”

My brow furrowed. “You’re literally on the Wikipedia page.”

“Yes.” She managed a smirk at that, some pride shining through. “But until I was fourteen, I thought it was stupid girl shite. To be clear, I was always a total nerd, but I was way into all the boy manga, for boys.”

“Ah. That, uh, didn’t last.”

“It did not,” she agreed. “I started to develop a…private fascination with magical girl media—er, no, that sounds much more pornographic than it was. It wasn’t like that—but of course I was afraid my peers—again, remember, secondary school boys—would make fun of me for it, so I…never told anybody, for fear of being labeled a weirdo and a pervert. I was ashamed of it. Parents didn’t help,” she groused. “And of course it was Hina who found out about it,” she grinned.

“Ha.” I didn’t particularly want to be reminded of Hina’s antics right now, but I tried not to let that show.

“Quite. Showed up at our door complaining I was way overdue to invite her over—nevermind that I’d never told her my address—and the first thing she did upon entering my One Piece-plastered room was dive for my laptop and check the search history. And because she’s Hina, there was no judgment whatsoever, and suddenly I had a friend to talk about this stuff with, and the floodgates opened pretty soon after. I figured out that the shame I was feeling was repressed envy for those girls, that I didn’t actually like being a boy. Hated it, in fact.”

“Huh.”

I am a little ashamed at past-me for being so reserved, so timid. Perhaps if I’d been more involved, asked more questions, I wouldn’t have needed Alice to spell it out for me so completely, as she was about to.

“—So by the time the firestorms happened, I knew I was a girl, but hadn’t…done anything about it. I mean, I was a sixteen-year-old boy-apparent in Japan, at a school with gendered uniforms and strict parents. All I could do was try on Hina’s clothes and feel my body hair grow in, feel my voice get deeper, week after week, dreading it. I stank, too, eurgh, glad to be rid of that.” She grinned.

“Um. Girls can smell.” Truly an incredible point at which to start being the peanut gallery, out of the wealth of details she’d just given me.

The grin rotted to an awkward smile. “Sure. True, yes, fair point. Girls can smell. But not me, because I transitioned with magic.” She raised a hand, curling and uncurling her fist in the same way I’d seen Hina do a few times. “This body wasn’t human-standard even before the dragon reared its head.”

I gaped, realizing the implications. Alice was saying she’d solved the problem that Star and I and countless others, plus real researchers, had met only dead ends on. “But—how? Even the cutting-edge stuff was nowhere near parity with traditional methods before the crackdown, and—”

“Oh, Ezzen,” she sighed. “Here’s where I start being a hypocrite. This body? These?” She reached down and tugged on her hoodie to emphasize her boobs. “Blood magic.”

“Still impossible,” I protested, trying to maintain eye contact. “People have tried.” I thought of everything I’d gone through with Star, long nights collating existing research and trying to extrapolate from it. We’d always come out the other end despairing—though her for a different reason than me. Right? “Tried quite desperately,” I added.

Alice stared at me as though I were an idiot. “With borrowed Flame. Sanguimancy, especially the mutagenic sort, is a totally different game for proper flamebearers. You know that firsthand.”

“…Okay.” I had to concede that much, given the changes presumably racing through my body as we spoke, even if I couldn’t really feel them right now. “Then what did you give up?”

“Nothing…I thought,” she clarified, again getting ahead of my interjection. “I transitioned on the 2nd of March, 2016, and it took three days of…have you ever seen Event Horizon?”

“I don’t watch anime.”

“It’s a movie, not an anime. What I mean is that it was impressively, disturbingly gory, and unbelievably painful, and then I was reborn anew, exactly as I wanted to be. Everything as it should have been, beyond what hormones or surgery could ever do, at least with the current tech, as you pointed out. Well, I still had to do some voice training, and there was learning makeup and fashion and all that—I’m getting off track. Since this was less than a year after the firestorms, we still didn’t really understand how blood magic worked, so I’d just thought that losing the, er, block and tackle, was enough of a price, given how much it had hurt. Besides, gender euphoria is a very novel emotion to feed the Flame—this was when Hina was really starting to explore her own options also, mind you, and she was having a great time with euphoria as a catalyst, so we really figured that I’d paid my price in full.”

“…But?” I prompted, before realizing where this was going. “Oh. But dragon.”

“But dragon,” she agreed with a sigh. “It’s wasted on me. Being a dragon-girl is—pardon my language—objectively kickass, and I’m sure there are lots of other trans people out there who would have been delighted for the Flame to do this to them—but for me, it’s a step in the wrong direction, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“I’ll help—”

“I know, I know, and I’m so extremely grateful, truly,” she said hurriedly. “Let me finish. You know what would be worse than getting my ideal form and then having it slowly morphed into something else?”

“Dying?”

I was fortunate she didn’t punch me for that one. Instead, she leaned back in the chair and laughed dryly. “You’re really something, Ezzen. Worse than dying, depending on who you ask: having the power to undertake the kind of transition I did, but being trapped by circumstance so that you can’t. That was where Izumi Takagiri found herself. That is why I will give her whatever support and sanctuary I can. That’s non-negotiable.”

I glared at her for a long second while I tried to figure out how I felt about that. In the abstract world of ethics, I felt Alice was doing the right thing—and I could admit that my heart hurt for Takagiri, or at least for the abstracted idea of the horrible situation she was describing. It was eminently noble to help. But the actual reality of my situation, the things that had taken place the other day, made it hard for me to scrounge up sympathy.

“She attacked me. And Yuuka. Really didn’t seem very remorseful at all, frankly.”

“She was under massive duress. And we have a common enemy. Sugawara is active, somehow, and we know that thanks to her. Finding him is our absolute top priority right now, after keeping both of you safe. A flamebearer alone is a flamebearer who’ll get snapped up. You know that!”

I sighed. I couldn’t avoid talking about the politics any longer, apparently. “Hikanome’s not going to cover for her? Don’t they hate Sugawara too?”

“We…didn’t tell them about her situation yet. I think we will—Takagiri wants to, at least, but on her terms, once we’ve dealt with Sugawara. She’s tired of hiding. And…I want to believe that Miyoko and Hongo will ultimately be supportive of her, both for her sake and ours. It’d be best for her, and for Todai, because the situation is…well. The government isn’t happy, and neither are the Peacies. Hell, the Vaetna themselves might show up.” Before I could perk up too much at that, she reached out to put a hand on my leg through the blanket and gave me an earnest expression. “Listen, Ezzen—I’m not asking you to forgive what she tried to do. But you have to accept that she’s not evil, she was coerced, and we are not in the business of denying help to potential allies out of spite.” She sighed. “She’s not going to try to hurt you again.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay.” It took me a long moment to swallow my personal sense of victimization, in part because—well, if Takagiri wasn’t the enemy I’d thought she was, then the far more unrepentant instigator of the whole debacle was Hina. And I still really didn’t want to think about Hina right now. “I’ll…try to get along. Is she going to be…sticking around? Long term?”

“I don’t know yet,” she admitted. “If Hikanome want nothing to do with her even after we clear things up…yes, I guess so. Would you like to talk to her?”

“…Why would I?”

Alice blinked at me. She opened her mouth, closed it again, opened it again, and closed it again. Fish-like. She put down her ice pack and sagged against her chair. “Forget it.”

She’d rallied her energy to explain all this to me, I deduced; now she was clearly approaching the end of her rope, and I didn’t want to impose.

“You can go,” I insisted. “Don’t let me take up your time. Thanks, for, uh—telling me about you.”

She nodded, glanced at the door, then back to me, and lastly down at the chair she was melting into. It didn’t look terribly comfortable, but at least the seat was padded.

“Actually, I’m good here for a little while,” she decided. “I’ve needed a break to just…process it all, you know? It’s been an insane few days. I mean…even all the politics aside, we knew Kimura. Talked with him plenty at dinners and such. And Takagiri too,” she rambled. “I mean, her really only in a combat and espionage capacity, and we sort of presumed her dead, but she was a known quantity. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that she’s him, that she’s been him this whole time.”

She was mostly talking to herself, offgassing what sounded like some serious mental dissonance. I didn’t have to shift my understanding in the same way she did; I’d only met Kimura only a few hours ago from my perspective, and technically Takagiri, very briefly, hardly a week before that. While they did seem like very different people, vicious assassin versus reserved samurai—to say nothing of the fact that Takagiri seemed a solid twenty years younger than her male body—it was easy enough to just think of it like Takagiri using Kimura as a mask for the public. Ironic, given that she was the magical construct.

“Really advanced mantle,” I mumbled, then realized something. “Hold on. All your research into mantles, proxying LM for your real bodies—was that for the same thing she’s doing now? Like, before the blood magic, was the mantle the way you were going to have a female body? Why the switch?”

Alice blushed, gaze fixed on the floor. “…Yes, that was the plan. After the Vaetna released the glyph lexicon, Hina and I tried really hard to figure out how to give me a girl body. The LM-facsimile-and-neural-link trick came from Ai-chan, who was exploring that side of things for our transformation sequence and ways we’d be able to fight like magical girls. The ideas dovetailed. Blood magic just wound up being…better. More complete. And it makes sense that if Takagiri wasn’t able to make that transition due to all the fucked up societal norms and Sugawara holding it over her, she’d have picked up where we left off with the mantles. Somebody was going to, eventually.”

“You’re not worried she stole the designs? Or that they were leaked?” I shifted awkwardly. “Something something, opsec?”

She chuckled. “I don’t think that’s the case. The fact is that she’s been doing this for at least five years; I think she made some educated guesses the first few times we were seen in public, copied the basic principles, and has mostly developed in parallel to us. There’s a lot of open-source research into LM constructs, after all.” She ended that with a meaningful look at me.

I rubbed my neck bashfully and avoided the look. “I’m really not that big of an influence. It’s all collaborative, and we’re always ultimately working in the Spire’s shadow, so—”

“You’re a genius on par with Ai. And that’s…” she faltered, biting her lip, and took a deep breath, steeling herself to push through my deflection and self-effacing. “Ezzen, the heights and depth of your research into LM and magic in general is literally unrivaled among your non-academic peers. That’s why everyone wants you so badly. And you always deflect that it’s about the Spire and the Vaetna, but—is there really nothing more to it?”

I froze, a deer in the headlights. “I mean—uh…no? Not really,” I blabbered, then started to get an inkling of where she was going with this, in light of the previous conversation. “I’m…some of my friends have called me ‘dysphoric’ about the Vaetna, and emotionally…I don’t know,” I faltered. “I don’t hate my body that way.”

“Dysphoria is a lot of things. If you ask me, you’re quite clearly uncomfortable in your skin, and you want to be something else than what you are. Would it be inaccurate to say you yearn for it?”

“I’m ‘uncomfortable’ because I don’t talk about this stuff…ever, not out loud,” I jabbed. “It’s not a gender thing, if that’s what you’re trying to say. It’s, um, transhumanist, I guess?”

This offended Opal. A pulse of hot air rolled through the room as she pinched the bridge of her nose. “Genius in some ways, so very oblivious in others. Alright: do you know why Yuuka started being nice to you on Friday? After your haircut?”

I hesitated, remembering how they’d quieted her with a few stern words and the threat of Amethyst’s massive claw holding her head. At the time, I’d just assumed they’d convinced her to be nice to me with some mixture of cajoling, threats, and attestations as to my character—but given Alice’s current line of insinuations, a different theory came to mind, one that even I wasn’t so oblivious as to miss.

“You told her I was trans?” I gaped. “Despite the fact that I’m not. What the fuck’s wrong with you? That’s massively—”

I was interrupted by the clack of the tip of Alice’s tail striking the floor. She held up a finger.

“Ezzen, you freaked out so badly at a haircut that you did last-minute blood magic to undo it, and took off all your body hair in the process. That’s not ever a cis thing.”

“I—I did that after that conversation! That doesn’t mean I’m—”

Jesus Christ, past me.

Alice held up a second finger. “You dress like I used to, like you’re ashamed of your body and feel the need to hide it, like you can’t fathom a version of yourself that other people would want to see.”

I winced. “I’m not ashamed! It’s just…” I floundered. “Armor. Carapace. Like—like the Vaetna, damn it, you know this about me.”

“Uh huh.” She held up a third finger. “You’re already they/them on the forums, and you ditched your masculine given name within hours of arriving here. We had a whole talk about legally changing your name at Tochou.”

“That’s an anonymity thing.”

“You’re not online anymore.” She gestured around us. “Your anonymity died the moment you were flametouched, Ezzen. Just—if being called ‘Dalton’ upsets you that much, that’s a data point.”

My automatic flinch at the name was incredibly damning. She winced as well.

“Sorry. Do you see what I mean?”

“…I just want to be called Ezzen because it sounds right,” I sighed. “Because it’s the name everybody already knows me by.”

“That can be true without your deadname—and I’m going to call it that, if you don’t mind—causing a flinch response.” She sighed, looking tired. “Ezzen, I’m asking you to engage in introspection that you’ve been avoiding for…I don’t know how long, all alone in that room of yours. You have trans friends online, and I know you actually talk to them about gender stuff, from how you’ve been treating me and Takagiri. Have none of them ever brought this up with you?”

Star had, in fact, and a few others I trusted to that level. But the conversation had always ended with how I dreamt of going higher than that. Any kind of human wouldn’t be enough for me; I wanted to be more, to go beyond.

“Transhuman,” I muttered. “Not transgender, that’s what we decided. I want to be a Vaetna.” Why was I choking up? “Doesn’t that answer all of this…interrogation, to your satisfaction? Can’t that be that enough for you?”

“Is it enough for you?” Her tail tapped the floor again. “I’m not saying you’re like me, that your discomfort with your body has to mean you want to be a girl. There’s so much room for things in between or things that are neither, and transhumanism is far, far from being mutually exclusive with gender. I’d bet the reality is somewhere in the middle. Is that so farfetched that you’d simply dismiss it out of hand? Do you trust us—hell, I understand not trusting Hina about this, but do you trust me—that little?”

I stared her down, trying to quell the emotions churning in my chest—defensive anger at her directness, juvenile rebelliousness at the idea of trusting somebody with this. Logically, I could admit that she was right, these things didn’t have to be mutually exclusive. But something in my heart was endlessly frustrated with the idea of aiming lower. Maybe, just maybe, in a world without magic or the Vaetna, I’d consider myself nonbinary, but that felt like it’d be giving up on my dream. I didn’t want to be a different type of human, I wanted to be more.

But being more meant going down Hina’s path, it seemed, and I resented that, too.

A crumb of self-awareness loosened from the knot in my chest. Maybe, even if just as a temporary measure, a stepping stone, I could be a little more adventurous with what kind of human I was. Maybe it’d help everything hurt less.

“…Maybe I’m due for a little introspection,” I sighed.

Alice smiled. It was a warm, gentle thing, and it only grew wider as she heaved herself to her feet, strong legs fighting gravity to lift her girthy tail. She stretched her back, which raised the hem of her hoodie just enough for me to see that she was indeed wearing shorts. I quickly averted my eyes, like I was seeing something I shouldn’t—then caught that thought, examined it in a new light. I still didn’t want to ogle the woman providing my room and board, but the sheer panic that arose when I perceived the female body was…something worth examining.

Unfortunately, examining it led me back to the same thing I’d been trying to avoid since I woke up. I met Alice’s eyes again with some difficulty and a tiny bit of foreboding.

“I need to talk to Hina about this, don’t I? She’s…thought I was trans since the start, hasn’t she?”

Alice confirmed that with a nod, but her smile faltered. “I—yes, but it’s more complicated than that. And you do need to talk to her about it…but I’m not sure now is the time.”

I eyed her. “Why not?” I’d expected her to egg me on—heh—and encourage me to follow the momentum of my tiny breakthrough. “She being…especially Hina? If we have to have this talk, I feel as ready for it as I’m going to get.”

That felt good to say…until Alice’s smile dropped off her face completely, replaced by something sad and pained.

“Yeah, but she’s not ready. She’s doing…bad.”

“Bad?”

“Bad.”

Author’s Note:

Gemder 2: the gemdering! At last, the egg cracks, albeit in a hairline sort of way. Baby steps, Ez.

I’m always nervous writing these one-on-one, dialogue-driven chapters, but I think this one landed where it had to. There were a lot of ways for me to go about finally making Ez confront all his egginess, but I felt it was most honest for it to come from a direct conversation, as these things so often do in the real world. Let me know how I did!

As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!

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March 7, 2025

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