Lower Class

by horizon

The Dean's Office

When Catalyst came out from the bathroom—huddled inside a thin police windbreaker, mascara smeared underneath her eyes, ugly bruises purpling one cheek and her throat and a wrist—there were two new people amid the cluster of police uniforms, both of whom immediately turned at her arrival. Although the man was not in uniform, everything about him—from posture to moustache to sunglasses to sky-blue dress shirt and khaki slacks—screamed that he was with the police. The older woman next to him—portly, with hair in matronly buns, dressed in a crisp white blouse and pencil skirt—was harder to place.

The older woman spoke first, as she stepped forward in low heels. "Miss Ibanez? I'm Dean White." Her voice sounded sympathetic, but Catalyst couldn't smell any sympathy behind it, and she didn't stick out her hand for a handshake as she introduced herself. The dean glanced around the school commons for a moment, blue and red tinting her face as the lights of three police cruisers flashed, and she frowned at the milling bystanders watching from behind the police line. "May I suggest that we move this conversation into my office?"

Again, the sympathetic voice—but now that she was closer, with a subtle scent of resentment and judgment. That meant this conversation was about to get every bit as uncomfortable as Catalyst was anticipating. She gave a sidelong glance to the dress-shirted policeman, sniffled, wiped her cheeks with the back of a mascara-smeared hand, and nodded.

Dean White's office was large and high-ceilinged, but something about the room still felt oppressive. Muted light came in from the window overlooking the quad, filtered through gauzy curtains flanked by deep velvet drapes. Bookshelves ringed the room, with hundreds of ancient titles sitting in silent witness. Catalyst finally placed it: The office was too large for immediate scent feedback and too small for comfort.

White took a seat behind her enormous mahogany desk. The dress-shirted man, settling into in a plush recliner to one side, put away his sunglasses and extracted a pen and notebook from his shirt pocket. That left a simple wooden chair in front of White's desk, and Catalyst slid into it meekly, folding her hands in her lap. The light over White's desk seemed angled down at her, a spotlight on a harsh and judgmental stage.

"This is Detective Alan Bergmann," the dean said. "I'd first like to assure you, Juanita, that we take physical assault with the utmost seriousness. I'm grateful you weren't hurt any worse. Our campus should be a safe place."

"Did I mention that I don't wish to press charges, Detective?" Catalyst said quickly. "I'm sorry, the last few minutes have been a blur."

"You did," Bergmann said, speaking for the first time. His voice was slow and husky, with a casual air to it, quite at odds with the tension in his pen grip and the practiced way his eyes darted around Catalyst's form. "But we're hoping that you can help us understand the story behind your relationship with Harvey Chutney."

"He said some interesting things," Dean White said.

The detective gave White a look. "Marian."

Catalyst braced herself. There it was, then.

Bergmann looked back at her. "We're here to help, Miss Ibanez. But I'd like to understand the full context of what happened, in the interests of justice. I don't want you to be afraid of Harvey anymore."

"Don't soft-pedal this, Alan," Dean White said, standing up from her chair. "Miss Ibanez, the man who attacked you has made some grave accusations, and this is your chance to contest them."

Catalyst drew in a deep breath. "Ma'am, sir, I see where this is going, and I intend to fully cooperate. Have you both been within proximity of Equestrian magic before? I am about to shapeshift, and you may feel a tingling sensation some people describe as distressing."

Without waiting for an answer, she closed her eyes and released the spell molding her into a human form. She felt fire wreath her limbs—a blaze she knew was ghostly green, ephemeral, burning hot against her essence but with no chance of damaging the furniture. In moments, fire had evaporated the artificial etheric structure that expanded her form, shrinking her back into a drone—her black carapace dully gleaming in the room lights, her vision widening, her scent sharpening. Dean White smelled startled; Detective Bergmann's lack of scent-shift told the story that he'd been through this before.

She, too, knew what was coming. Catalyst opened her eyes, lighting her horn to open the handbag that moments ago she would have had to fumble through with fingers, and went through the formalities. "Juanita Ibanez doesn't exist. My true name is Brittle Horn."

White and Bergmann glanced at each other, and this time she caught a whiff of mutual surprise.

"Then we'll need to see some identification," White said. "Green Hills has one changeling student, and that's not her."

Brittle already had pulled her papers out. "I'm a registered shifter, affiliated with Freedom Hive, and I have a current residence pass. Detective, if you please, here is my passport and thaumic key. I consent to thaumic scan. Did you bring a wand up with you?"

Bergmann stood up, fishing one from his pocket. "I did." That meant he had prepared for this, then. She had made the right move opening up.

Catalyst stood up on the chair, facing Bergmann's chest, and waited in silence for him to sweep the keywand all around her body. Thaumic keys were unique and didn't change during shapeshifting. The process therefore gave Earth law enforcement confidence that the shapeshifter in front of them was who they claimed to be. Essentially, she had just been magically fingerprinted—and the outcome of this conversation was going to stick with her for the rest of her life.

Finally, the wand beeped, and Bergmann compared the wand's readout to the card she had provided. He then scrutinized her passport, taking a photo of her documentation and making several notes in his notebook. "It checks out, Marian."

"Does it? Give me the key." White pulled a laptop from her desk.

"I'm not Dark Wing, ma'am," Brittle said, the name coming out sharp and hot. "Do what you need to do to confirm it, though."

Dean White tapped at the laptop for a bit, then held up Brittle Horn's ID and glanced back and forth between it and the screen.

"Thank you, Mx. Horn," Bergmann said while the dean was working. "Do you have a preferred name-form? Any pronoun requests?"

"Since we are here to be fully honest with each other—Brittle, please," the changeling said. "Standard usage is fine." Given the situation, she was trying to be as courteous as possible—accepting whatever gender role her counterparts had met her under, meaning that she would continue to be a she, since some idea of "Miss Ibanez" was still stuck in White and Bergmann's heads.

"You are, in fact, not Miss Wing," Dean White said with a frown that had been deepening since Brittle's revelation. She slid Brittle's paperwork back across the desk. "I would ask what you're doing on my campus, but let's cut to another question I suspect will answer that. Who is Catalyst?"

Brittle nodded, and levitated a stack of simple white business cards from her handbag.

"There is no Catalyst," she said. She levitated a card to both White and Bergmann, and put the rest away. The card said simply "Catalyst Professional Services," with a phone number underneath. "Catalyst is a brand name, not a changeling. But you're speaking to the correct drone, regardless. Given what you already know, perhaps you can understand why I might not share my real name with my clients."

"I'd prefer to hear that explanation in your own words," Detective Bergmann said.

Brittle braced herself. "Because my services are in a gray area of academic morality which Miss White will take understandable exception to."

White's scent grew grim. "I appreciate you at least admitting that much," she said, her face stony.

"And how did this lead to Harvey Chutney assaulting you in broad daylight on campus?" Bergmann said.

"Well," Brittle said, "let's start with how I met him."

Comments

[Raugos]

"Because my services are in a gray area of academic morality which Miss White will take understandable exception to."

Ah. They sit for exams on behalf of their clients, I suspect.

[SWEETOLEBOB18]

12078496
I watch enough cop shows to know
BIG mistake to talk without a lawyer.

[horizon]

12078917
Agreed, in reality. For this specific piece of fiction, I did my best to set up a scenario where the lack of lawyer made sense for Brittle Horn: both that she was trying to trick her interrogators, and that wouldn't have worked if she hadn't opened up and volunteered all the information she wanted them to believe; and that she was being grilled about subjects which weren't legally actionable (aside from the solicitation angle, where she used the threat of lawyering up to steer the direction of the conversation). Even so, she was taking a calculated risk, and may well have dealt with bigger problems down the line due to her choice.