It’s early morning outside CHS. The buses have only just started to swim in, dropping herds of shuddering students to complain in the autumn air. Thankfully, your parents’ distant magnanimity gifted you a car.
You set an alarm for this, but you didn’t get very much sleep anyway. Walking behind the building, you try to put thoughts of your conversation yesterday out of your head. She likes you. She invited you to eat lunch with her, didn’t she?
But you can’t shake the worry that maybe you bored her and she was afraid to tell you. Or else you offended her and she only realized it later. You haven’t slept well, but your future seems like it’s still intact, so whatever goes on, the long game’s intact.
You’re Care Root, ”Wiz Kid” to some, and like many of your peers you’ve gained the power of Stand. Except for you, it was more of a curse.
Your ability could burn the happiness in your future for raw power. Except it turned out you didn’t have any. This left you prepared to suffer the rest of your life quietly, but then you stumbled on this one particular girl, and your future opened up. The rest of your life is full of joy now, and you aren’t entirely sure why, but you have a feeling not everything is ordinary about this cross-eyed teenager.
Or your feelings for her.
And your time spent unnoticed by the other Stand users is coming to an end. Which coincidentally brings you to the back of the school...
”Wiz Kid.”
Oh. It’s her. You ignore the nickname because she probably doesn’t know better, and watch as she leaves the shadows. White hair, blue skin, will probably look the same age forever until those two things fade. Blue, witchy uniform, like a Wiccan without the courage to look untidy.
And the note in your locker, which had only given the place and time, written in neat, flowing script. The kind you take multiple attempts at. If you knew her by more than reputation, you’d have expected this.
“Trixie.”
She smiles. ”Yes, the Great and Powerful Trixie has been looking forward to speaking with you! There are offers in the wings around here, but Trixie’s going to make hers first!” She looks not just pleased with herself but excited.
“Offers?”
She nods. ”Normally I wouldn’t be so forward, but... Trixie wants you on her side, Wiz Kid. My organization is shaping up to be the best in this town!”
“What do you need to take sides for?”
”Well, obviously because of the Rainbooms!” she says, and then by your look determines that you’re not in the loop. ”...They’re not doing anything.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?”
”No! They’re always running around fixing things! Trixie’s heard that yesterday you blew a hole in a wall and no one reported you! They should be hunting you like dogs!”
You supposed you hadn’t noticed them around, but… Well, honestly, it would’ve taken a little squinting for you to pick them out of a lineup. You didn’t do the whole school clique thing.
Not that it stopped everyone from calling you a “techie” because you had a shoddy haircut and wore a math pin. (Yeah, neural networks and set theory are the same thing, aren’t they?)
She’s still going. “And that Twilight character’s transferred here permanently. She’s been around for weeks now! She has to be preparing for something! And whatever it is, we’re going to show her we can handle it without her, and take the spoils for ourselves!” She breaks out of the monologue and turns to you, fists clenched, looking hopeful.
You’d have a hard time saying no to that face if you didn’t already feel so distracted. “Fighting’s not really my area…”
She scoffs and waves you off with one hand. ”Say no more, I understand the importance of chivalry with powers such as yours! Everyone knows you fight only to protect the innocent!” You cringe at that, but she doesn’t notice, already moving ahead, ”But there are bigger echelons to climb, Wiz! We need to take them in our hands while there’s still time, or else some other group is going to control everything that happens in Canterlot High! Wouldn’t you like to make sure the people running things are trustworthy?”
“...I guess I’m just not interested in who runs things, Trixie. My power’s not as good for fighting as you think it is. Sorry.”
She laughs. ”You don’t have to lie. Trixie knows what you did with your Stand, and how you hid it for weeks without showing anybody. You’re frankly obnoxiously good in class, you’re never late, and you’re never around other people. You’re playing a deeper game if Trixie’s ever seen it.
”I think you’d like coming down to our level more than you’d think. I think you’re worried, and you’ve got no one to take away those worries.” She says, coming uncomfortably closer.
You want to wave her away, and say “No, I have a date.” But, well, is it? It’s lunch.
Lunch with a pretty girl who gives meaning to the rest of your life.
You shake your head at Trixie. “I don’t think I’m interested on being part of anyone’s side, or level, or anything.”
Her expression becomes more obscure. ”Alright, Trixie will give you some time to think about it.” And then, like a smash cut, she’s ten feet away from you. You hadn’t even blinked.
She stalks away around the corner. You almost want to follow her, but you have a sneaking feeling she’s already vanished. Besides, the building’s probably open now, and it is pretty cold out here. You turn to leave.
And notice a figure in a big hood and a black backpack staring at you.
”｢Fineshrine｣!” A girl, given the voice.
A small, gnarled tree shimmers into existence behind her, its boughs pointed skyward. On it are birds with roots digging into their bodies, twitching. Being drained of color?
”Oh, yes, Care, I know your power works with light! And that means you’re useless against a blind enemy!” The birds detach from the tree, and they’re albino, eyeless, cold things that hover in the air. ”You might act all high and mighty about protecting people, but you made one mistake! You tried to touch dernier!”
What? Was that a thing? A name, a slang word you aren't current for?
The birds stop, realign themselves in an odd kind of grid. She shouts, “No matter how strong you are, I’m gonna put you in the hospital for that!”
The birds dive for you. These look like birds that spent a million years deep underground without losing their wings. You can make out organs under their feathers, like they’re sculpted out of gelatin. Their “faces” are smooth where the eyes should be, just beaks.
Their formation shifts into a V shape, with the most translucent heading the spear at you.
You summon up your Stand. ”｢Timbuk Three｣!”
You don’t have time to survey your whole future and decide what to burn. (You did do a bit of combing through it last night, though, when you should’ve been sleeping. It reminded you of shaking Christmas presents to find out what was inside them.) Carefully you reach for something small and inconsequential from the far end of your future.
There.
｢Timbuk Three｣ lights up a little. You’ve got thirty seconds of power, and you throw a laser through the one in front to see what happens. A hole appears, and it collapses. Then you bend the laser through the others, knowing the additional accuracy is burning away your time.
Then you let off a shot on the trunk of the tree. The hooded girl tries to recall it, but she doesn’t do it faster than the speed of light. Then she clutches her stomach as whatever-it-is retreats.
You throw down a flare to illuminate her hood. She tries to turn away, but you catch her face.
Yellow with orange hair, glinting surprised eyes, a look of desperation. You don’t recognize her.
She turns her face away from you, but doesn’t run. Instead, she clenches her fists. You stand and look at her for a minute, but she seems to be waiting for you to attack.
...“Why are you fighting me?”
Silence. Maybe she’s waiting for you to leave? She doesn’t seem very unthreatening.
Should you repeat the question?
”I already told you, you egghead. Even if my information about you wasn’t completly accurate, ｢Fineshrine｣’s going to teach you the most important lesson of all: you don’t mess with family.”
“Family? Like the Mafia, or something?” You picture the guy you’d punched into the teacher’s lounge, and his “army”. You’re beginning to feel concerned about how many groups and factions and squadrons you were unaware of for the past weeks.
She snorts, then starts laughing in earnest. Somehow, even her laughter sounds aggressive. She doesn’t look like much, at least so obscured, but you have a feeling she could throw you a few yards.
She throws her head back and the hood falls off of her orange hair, green eyes flashing with ill will. Still no matches.
Then she holds a hand in front of her face, fingers spread. ”Flesh and blood, brother and sister, the ties that bind and the covenant of the water of the womb! Truly someone so brutish can never appreciate the importance of family, unless it’s perverted by a criminal outfit! I’ve been told how violent you can be, but now I know it for certain!”
The ground shakes a little.
”I, Golden Harvest, have sworn to protect my little sisters above all else! Do you think that I would let someone like you into their lives unannounced?! I don’t think so!”
The tree phases up through the concrete, and attached to it are dozens of insects. Beetles and worms, with pointy black chitinous shells growing around them.
”For my sister’s purity and honor, I will smite you!” Her voice rises even further. The tree seems to sway in the breeze, and then hurls the bugs on two of its boughs at you.
You try to zap them away, but you’re out of juice. Then you burn something closer to the present and try to shoot out all of them at once.
The lasers bounce away harmlessly onto the brick walls and skies above.
You duck and cover your head. Most of them miss, but a few tear at your arms as they fly past. Some impact audibly on the wall to your left. A glance up and more are being thrown at you. Another dodge, worse off for you because they were aimed low.
Some attach to your legs and dig in like brambles into tennis shoes. You were considering running if this got bad, and now you’re not so sure that’s an option.
She’s grinning sadistically now, striding over to you over the mess of dead birds. Whatever you just burned up has burned out.
She raises a fist to strike you, and holds it there for a moment. Back where she was standing, birds are drifting towards the tree, being attached, and gaining the same black coating. ”They’re going to keep coming. And I’m going to make them better and better. And you know what can stop them?”
You ignore her at first in anticipation of the punch, then as you see the spiny shells growing out of melting speckled feathers. She moves to punch you in the stomach, but you burn something and throw up a shield in front of her fist.
She grunts. ”Just say that you’ll never talk to Derpy again, never even look at her, and you’ll never have to see me again. That’s all it’ll take.”
You grit your teeth and feel a strange uneasiness in your chest. Your future could change here. Run away and she’d take that as a “yes”, and make sure you didn’t see Derpy. Or else tell her that you weren’t interested in seeing her. Or…
The pit drops out of your stomach.
Or that you beat up her older sister behind the school before class started.
There goes most of your backup plans. You’re playing with napalm right now.
”Well?”
Well?
She throws another punch as her birds circle around you. You blow something medium-sized and throw up a shield in all directions.
Your fake sense of bravado got you this far. May as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. Golden’s pressed up against the hard light like she’s peering into a window, and you meet her eyes while the birds smash into it one at a time.
“I don’t know if I’m going to be a good thing for your sister or not. But I’m going to try. I don’t know how to appreciate it yet, but without her my life doesn’t have any meaning at all. This is the path that’s been laid out for me, and if she lets me then I’m going to see her a lot more. So no. No. I could never say those words, not for any reason! I won’t do it!”
This hasn’t left a good impression on her. In point of fact, she looks like she’s fixing to murder you.
“I’m sorry.” Your shield drops.
She lets go with a right hook. It hits, and you stagger, nursing your cheek. It’s not quite as bad as you were expecting, honestly.
You meet her eyes again. “Whatever you think of me, however bad I seem to you, I don’t want to fight you.”
She’s scowling. ”This’d be a lot easier if you’d just say you’ll never see her again.”
You almost want to say “Sorry.”
Instead you answer, “I’ll leave her alone the day she tells me to. But not before then. I won’t fight you over that.” Man, if she only invited you to sit with her at lunch because she felt bad for you you’re going to feel like a complete idiot. At least there’s only an audience of one this time.
Golden shakes her head. ”You’ve got some nerve. But it’s not up to her. You’ll be birdseed before the first bell. Try talking your way out of this one!” She readies another hook as the chitin-birds swoop.
Then her fist freezes in mid-air. So do the birds. A mesh of red light pulls at both of them.
And then, like a demented fast-forward carousel, the dead birds on the ground rise up. They’ve practically been daisychained together, a long cord of hard light traveling through the holes in their creepy blind little bodies. They swing around like drunken marionettes and impale themselves with the bugs, which stick.
And then, with their new additions, they smash into their living compatriots, being cut and stuck and glued to each other in an instant.
You’re testing the limits of your control, not all of them are doing what you want, but the gist of your commands involve swinging dead things in circles, so you’re inching through. She’s stopped trying to break your hold on her fist and is just standing there straining with effort as her Stand’s attacked.
The tree gets maypoled, all seven boughs, with squawking black monsters and jelly-skinned cave-birds. It looks as ridiculous as it sounds, but they stick to the surface, all over it, covering up the space they took originally. You hammer some in with strikes of hard light, just to keep them where they are.
Then your power runs out, and she’s free to hit you.
She falls to her knees, gasping.
With the rush of victory comes the same voice you spoke with in that hallway. “I knew your Stand depended on changing living things. And if you could do it twice, you would’ve recalled your original birds as soon as I started to knock them down. You need new animals to work with, and you can’t change them as long as those are taking up the space. So call off your Stand and let Derpy decide for herself, or I’ll have to get even more clever.”
She taps out as she catches her breath. ｢Fineshrine｣ withdraws. ”F-fine. Provisional license. Tryout period. But if you lay one finger on her, or make her cry, or keep her out past her curfew, I’ll come for you while you’re sleeping.”
You nod, then hold a hand out to her, and in the hopes of making her feel better you say, “I’ll hold you to that.”
She scowls, but takes it, and lets go as quickly as she can.
Walking away, dusting herself off and muttering, you wonder what sort of family you’re getting involved with here.
The rest of the morning passes by uneventfully. The only difference is how many eyes are on you.
Trixie winks at you when she passes in the hallway. There’s a letter in your locker that reads “Expect no favors.” One girl you recognize by her hair as Rainbow Dash seems to trail you between classes. Altogether, it’s surreal.
But eventually lunch comes around, that pandaemonium of health-freak food. And Derpy.
You scan around for her and find her waving from a table by the wall while the others fill up. You head over.
”Hey! Sorry my sister was so awful to you, she’s just a little mistrustful of strangers.”
You haven’t bruised, but you’re still a little sore. (And, still, tired.) “It’s alright. I like how much she cares.”
She smiles at that. She believes you’re sincere when you say that. And… come to think of it, you guess you are. You’re no expert, but better a good older sister than a shitty one, you guess.
”I think she likes you already. She just doesn’t want to admit it.”
You wonder what Golden Harvest’s hatred looks like.
Then, lunch happens. Trays, food, sitting, chewing...
It’s quiet. Not in a bad way. Just in a… quiet way. You wonder if you’re messing something up. And more than that, something’s still gnawing at you. That word you couldn’t make out, that Golden said right before you fought...
“Derpy, mind if I ask you a question?”
She shakes her head around a bite of yogurt.
“What’s your full name?”
”Dernier Piege.”
Yeah, Dernier. That’s what she said alright. You try it out for yourself. “Dernier Piege… What’s it mean?”
She smiles, and her eyes glow. ”It’s French. My dad delivered mail on an ocean freighter before I was born, and he loved to travel everywhere. My mom didn’t like how much time he spent away, but nothing she said could make him stay and take on a different job. Then, after I was born, he knew there was no way he could stay away, so that’s what he named me. The last trap.”
“That’s really cool.”
She thinks so too. There’s glee bouncing around in her expression. ”No one’s ever asked me that before! I always wanted to tell someone!”
You chuckle. “Oh, I know what that feels like. You want to share it with another person so they’ll feel it the same way you do, but no one seems interested. Same reason no one ever asks me about the Monty Hall Problem.”
You realize you feel relaxed. You can speak long sentences here without worrying that you’re talking too much, and she really listens to all of it. Even if eye contact is still a little mystifying to you right now.
Then she says the most beautiful words you’ve ever heard. ”What’s the Monty Hall Problem?”
You grab a napkin and start sketching.
It’s a wonderful lunchdate. You even make plans to go out after school tomorrow. And you realize, belatedly, that it really is all worth getting beaten up for.
Fido
Everything is dark when you open your eyes. An ugly behind-the-scenes sorta room, and everything smells like disinfectant. You have to squint to read the posters in the dark, but you can see the dumb pictures of hearts and smiley faces.
You’ve just woken up in the nurse’s station at the school. The nurse isn’t here. According to the window in the corner, school’s not even happening right now. It’s pitch black out there.
You don’t know what the fuck just happened, except for that fucking kid. Him and the girl. You wonder if this was a coma type deal and you’re two hundred years in the future. You always were a fan of Heinlein… But your boys are out there all alone. Can’t tolerate that. Wouldn’t last a minute without you.
Then you feel her.
Someone else, here, with you. “What’s your deal?”
Then you recognize her, as her hand sinks into your chest. Your eyes widen and your breath hitches. Her fingers find your soul and grip it tight. You would cry out if you had it in you.
You summon ｢Sweet Thing｣, but it fizzles and glitches in the air beside you.
”Shhhh. You’ve done a good job up to now. We just need you... stronger.”
You stare up at the ceiling and, in a moment of pain, something slips loose and you fall unconscious again.
｢TO BE CONTINUED｣
Stand: ｢Fineshrine｣
User: Golden Harvest
Ability: A tree which attracts animals hypnotically to its boughs and holds them captive at the user’s command. Animals attached to ｢Fineshrine｣ can be altered genetically for one threat or condition chosen by the user, and the alterations will reflect how their species would behave if it had been a naturally selected adaptation.