Chapter Twenty-Two

Amber was kind of glad that she transformed first; it gave her the opportunity to sit back and watch the others without having to worry.

Jade stepped up and took a deep breath. “I’ve only done this once or twice,” she said. “The Seelie warned me against transforming on Earth in case I was pulled here. Please forgive me if my transformation isn’t entirely accurate.”

“Nah,” Wendy said. “You’re a newbie, newbies gonna new...b.” She frowned. “Basically, take your time.”

Jade nodded and tugged at the end of her scarf.

Amber expected it to tighten, but instead, like some sort of writhing snake, the scarf began to undulate and spin around Jade, even when she let go of the end, it continued to spin and lengthen, like the cord on a spinning top.

Jade twisted in the middle, the scarf cocooning her until Amber could only just catch glimpses of pale flesh within the shifting banner. Then, it settled and the scarf snapped back around and landed on her shoulders like some sort of shawl.

Jade shook her shoulders loose and smiled at them. “That’s it,” she said.

Her costume was a soft pink, a sort of half skirt that covered her sides and rear, and left her front exposed where she was wearing some shorts. Thigh-high socks faded into a pair of clean mary janes, and her shirt, which exposed just a slip of tummy, was decorated with little ribbons at the neck and cuffs.

“Nice,” Cassy said. “But mine’s better.”

Amber shook her head. “At least you don’t have to dance,” she said.

“I need to, ah, dance a little inside my cocoon,” Jade said. “It’s somewhat mortifying to think that someone might see me, but it’s not that bad, I think.”

“Yeah, she doesn’t need to clock dance, at least,” Cassy said.

Amber shot the blue-haired girl a glare, but it wasn’t that powerful. She agreed with her, which made it hard to be angry about it.

“How about you show off, then?” Wendy asked.

Cassy hopped off her broom, then directed it to stand upright next to her. “No problem,” Cassy said.

She started by walking a circle around the broom. Amber wondered when she was going to start, when Cassy grabbed the middle of her weapon and let herself fall down. Halfway to the ground, she gracefully raised one leg up, her hand trailing across her now bare thigh--

Amber snapped her eyes away and tried to get the burning of her cheeks under control. It didn’t help that she could still see Cassy’s dance from the edge of her vision. It involved a lot of gyrating and spinning on that broom of hers, all the while parts of her costume appeared in puffs of thin, barely-obscuring fog.

“And that,” Cassy said as she kicked over and landed on the points of her feet. She walked around her broom again, but did it while swaying her hips in a way that had Amber’s cheeks reddening all over again. “Is how you transform.” Her voice was husky and just a little breathless.

Amber looked to the others. Morgan was in a similar state as her, and Jade was... just staring. Wendy clapped her hands. “That was hot!”

“That’s... no,” Amber said.

“No?” Cassy repeated. She placed her hand on her hip and pouted. “What do you mean, no?”

The costume was all pale blues with darker highlights. A skirt that wouldn’t pass muster in any school a button up blouse with too few buttons, and a huge, wide-brimmed witches hat that had more cloth making it up than the entirety of the rest of Cassy’s outfit.

It does look good on her, Amber thought before banishing that line of thinking. “What if children see you transform?” Amber asked.

“There aren’t any kids around here,” Cassy said.

“It’s... obscene,” Amber tried.

“Yeah, that’s the whole point of it,” Cassy replied. “I’m very hot, and I want everyone to know it.”

Wendy gave her a thumbs up. “You go girl.”

Cassy grinned back, then hopped onto her broom and rode it side-saddle a few feet in the air. “Thanks Wendy.”

Amber wasn’t sure if she should say something, but the Seelie speaking up put a stop to that idea. “Every magical’s gift is uniquely suited to them. This often extends to their dress and how they change. It’s an expression of their inner being, to an extent.”

“So, Cassy’s inner being is a stripper?” Amber asked.

Cassy laughed, legs kicking out. “And yours is a grandfather clock.”

“Alright, enough bickering,” Wendy said as she hopped off her seat. She grabbed the army-hat wearing seelie and placed it on her shoulder, where it somehow managed to cling on without issue. “Morgan, you’re last.”

Morgan nodded. She extended a hand to the side, and a sword, long and narrow, appeared in it. She flicked it up, then down while taking a half step forwards. In the space between those two flicks, her costume appeared.

Under a second. Jade takes a good ten seconds, and Cassy’s... show, takes fifteen seconds.

“Not exactly flashy, huh?” Wendy asked.

“I try not to be,” Morgan replied evenly. “Now that we’ve proven we can transform, are we actually going to train?”

“Oh? Yeah yeah, uh, maybe start with what your powers allow you to do? That’s a good place to start, right?”

Morgan nodded slowly. “It’s good to let your allies know, yes. Shall I begin?”

“Yeah yeah, sure,” Wendy said. “Then we can all take turns beating each other up.”

“We’ll see about that,” Morgan said. “As for myself, I have no powers. That’s all. Next?”

“Uh,” Wendy said. She looked to the seelie for guidance.

“Morgan’s power isn’t one so obvious to see as that,” the seelie said.

“That’s super helpful,” Wendy said. “So, stripper girl, you’re next.”

Cassy grinned. “Can I demonstrate?” she asked.

“Yeah!” Wendy said before anyone had time to protest.

Cassy’s broom rose and she spun around so that she was sitting as if upside-down in the air. And then the ceiling became the floor and Amber yelped as she tumbled into the air, falling upwards towards the lamps that had been above.

Halfway there, the floor became the floor once more and Amber crashed into the ground with a wallop.

“Oops,” Cassy said.

Amber groaned and looked up. Morgan had her sword planted in the ground, and Jade had landed on her scarf which had uncoiled to form a cushion. She wasn’t sure what Wendy had done, but the girl seemed entirely unhurt.

“What was that?” Amber asked.

“I switched gravity around,” Cassy said.

Amber stared at the ceiling some more. “Could have warned us,” she said.

Cassy laughed and floated over with her broom, when she was above Amber, she reached down with her hand for Amber to grab it. “Sorry?”

Amber took the offered hand and pulled herself to her feet. “I’m fine,” she said. “Just wasn’t expecting it.”

“I’ll warn you next time,” Cassy promised.

“Can you pick the direction the gravity pulls towards?” Morgan asked. “And do you need to take into account normal gravity?”

“Uh, yeah,” Cassy said. “But it’s easier to think about it as turning one direction to down. Like, make ‘left’ be ‘down.’ Can’t switch it up too quickly either. And... I think it cancels normal gravity?”

“What’s the range?” Morgan added.

Cassy shrugged. “Dunno.”

“We’ll have to test that, as well as your deployment speed, and some sort of code so that you can tell us when you’re going to use your power, especially if we’re in the area of effect.”

“You’re making it sound less fun by the minute.”

“I just don’t want any of us to get hurt,” Morgan said. “It’s a strong power, don’t get me wrong, it’s just a little indiscriminate in its application.”

“Yeah,” Wendy agreed. “Bet you could mess up some other team’s formations with that, or send them flying into walls and stuff. It’s a neat power.”

That bolstered Cassy’s mood a bit. “Yeah, it is pretty awesome. Also, I can fly obviously. I need the broom through, otherwise it’s really messy.”

“Can you fly without?” Morgan asked.

“Eh,” Cassy wiggled her hand from side to side in a so-so gesture. “I can fling myself around. But it’s too hard to adjust things quickly, so I avoid doing it.”

“Might be worth practicing, just in case,” Morgan said.

Cassy flopped to the side and draped herself across her broom. “Practice is for losers,” she muttered. “Someone else do something, I’m O-O-M.”

“Oom?” Amber asked.

“Out of magic,” Morgan replied. “It’s a shorthand. And I doubt one use of your power took up that much magic. If that’s the case, we’ll need to add efficiency training to the list of things to do.”

Cassy groaned harder.

“Should I do next?” Jade asked.

“Go ahead!” Wendy said.

Jade nodded, then flung her arm to the side. Her scarf speared out that way, not so much unwinding from her neck, as it simply grew longer and thicker until it was as big around as Jade herself and sifting through the air like some sort of giant purple snake.

“I can make my scarf move and stretch out like this,” Jade said. “And I can form barriers with it, as well as use it as a sort of whip.” The end of the scarf coiled, then snapped at the air with a crack.

“That’s neat,” Wendy said.

“Ah, I can do more,” Jade said. “Is there anything you could throw at me? Something not too important?”

Wendy looked around, then grabbed her chair. “This good?” she asked.

Jade nodded.

The chair, just one of those metal folding chairs that Amber had seen a million of, flew across the air on a straight path for Jade’s head.

The scarf flashed out, splitting at the end to become a mass of cloth-covered tendrils that crashed into the chair and wrapped around it. Before the chair had moved another meter it was fully wrapped, then the scarf constricted and reformed as a single thick layer of yarn which became smaller and looped around Jade’s neck.

“Where’d the chair go?” Wendy asked. “I hope they don’t make me fill out a form for that.”

Jade shook her head. “No, it’s fine. Anything I wrap in my scarf can be sent to another dimension.”

“You have a pocket dimension in your scarf?” Cassy asked. “Can you put anything in it?”

“I think so?” Jade asked. “I haven’t put anything living in it.” She gestured, and a coil of scarf unwound itself and spun into a cocoon. When it unfurled, the chair clattered to the ground, seemingly undamaged.

“We’ll need to see if you can capture living things,” Morgan said. “And the dimensions of the things you can grab.”

“I agree,” Jade said. “The biggest thing I’ve tested it on was a car. It doesn’t seem to depend on time, but it does take longer to wrap something bigger up. The scarf can move somewhat independently too.”

“Can you use it to help you move?” Morgan asked.

Jade nodded. “A little. Like a grapple, I suppose. It can help soften landings too. It’s very gentle when I want it to be.” She reached up and grabbed onto the part of the scarf covering her mouth and lower face, and squished it tight with both hands.

Morgan looked like she was doing some mental math as she regarded the scarf. “How long can you stretch it out? Do you lose control after a certain range?”

“I haven’t thought of testing that,” Jade said. “It doesn’t feel like control would be an issue though.”

“Interesting. And how much magic does it use?”

“Not too much, but some. It’s fairly constant. I think the more scarf I use, the more magic it takes. And capturing something uses a lot more magic, but just to send and retrieve things.”

“Any other weapons?” Morgan asked.

Jade shook her head.

“We might have to get you some standard weaponry then. The scarf seems good at short and medium ranges, and it’s definitely going to be handy as a defensive tool, but some engagements are long-ranged,” Morgan said.

“You want to give her a gun?” Amber asked.

“She has a pocket dimension,” Morgan said. “If it doesn’t cost anything to keep things stored, she could carry an armory with her.”

Jade blinked. “I wouldn’t mind that.”

“She could carry our stuff from class to class,” Cassy added.

“I might mind that,” Jade said.

Amber stood a little taller, it was her turn, judging by the attention turning her way. “I don’t know the limitations of my power yet,” she said. “But I know that it tends to use a lot of magic. Basically, I can send things, people, and myself, back in time.”