School carried on mostly quite normal. Talk of heroes though did stir… something in Bill. ‘What else does a hero do?’… Bill was in the corner of the classroom, with about twenty other students taking a stupid test… hardly anything a hero would do.
‘A hero would stand out… get noticed… fight against evil…’ That did sound rather appealing the more he thought about it. Silently he wondered if things were to suddenly turn sour… could he be that hero? Would he put himself in harms way to protect others?
… Bill was about to find out, as the world for him was about to change.
Bill glanced slightly towards the window as something ‘flew’ inside, passing through the glass immaterially. The creature looked like a rather cute girl with horns and pale white eyes. Tiny bat-wings on her back. Despite the dramatic entrance, nobody reacted to her presence.
…except for Bill. “…what the-“
The teacher at the front of the class glanced to where Bill was looking. “Is there a problem?” she asked.
Bill frowned but quickly picked up that whatever he was seeing was invisible… and clearly others couldn’t see her. Either that or he had become insane… and he was quite sure of his sanity at the moment. “Uh.. nothing. Just thought I saw something out the window.”
The demon-girl gave a slight tilt of the head. “Huh… weird. Did he sense me?” she walked right up to Bill, and waved her hand in front of his eyes. Bill didn’t react, mimicking what his fellow students were doing… something was strange about this…
At this point more demons seemed to fly in. Two more… one seemed to be a male, as far as Bill could tell. All different sizes and shapes. They joined their hands together, and started to fly above the classroom…
“Is that a light?” one girl asked. “Where’s it coming from-“
‘Chaos warp!’
Bill had managed to duck under the table, not quite sure ‘what’ was going on. However, whatever that light was, it had to be bad news. “Oh Crap!” He cried out. This was just like in those stupid comics! The light- he tried to avoid it…
The teacher in front of the class had become a cat-girl!
Bill stared at the scene. Everyone in class had just ‘stopped’ moving. It was like time had stopped… an eerie blue light was shining. He glanced at the clock seeing that it wasn’t even ticking now.
“Such a pretty cat-girl!” A blue demon-girl giggled. The little imp-creature buried her face into the breast of the new frozen woman.
Then there was Dawn the Goth girl… she had become a mermaid. A real actual mermaid! She had light blue fins, and wavy green hair. She looked oddly beautiful- ‘no don’t think about it!’ he blinked a little afraid as he tried to get out of the class. He wasn’t too far from the exit, perhaps if he crawled through… at least he had not been changed, and for some reason he could still move in this ‘frozen’ time.
The demons were all giggling to themselves, congratulating each other on the job they had done. “I see you did a few gender changes there?” “Oh well when you changed him into a Harpy, I had to make him into a girl.” “Why not just do a pure gender change?” “Eh, it gets dull after a while-“
Bill somehow managed to crawl underneath the next desk, which was Shawn’s. However, all he could see were a set of talons… and a few stray pieces of feathers. Shawn had turned into a harpy! The young teen was frozen in shock…
“This one would make a fantastic demon-girl-“
Another bright light as the boy’s skin turned red… large bountiful breasts formed on her chest as her school unform even changed. “Time’s running out we should- huh?”
Bill started to run for the exit. He glanced behind as his classroom was in various states of strange surreal transformations. Three odd ‘creatures’ were causing them… creatures of chaos… but he barely had any time to look as he ran down the corridor…
“…did that mortal just run away during a time freeze spell?”
Bill ran, breathing hard. He was close to the exit… but suddenly he saw one of those strange creatures in his way. “Oh… crap.”
The creature was ‘floating’… much like he imagined a fairy would. It was about the size of a small child, but clearly mature. It had skin of strange purple hues and an odd symbol on its forehead. He gulped inside but dared not to show any fear.
“Hey there.” The creature smiled.
“…Hey.” Bill said back. “…Your friends are causing a lot of chaos there.” He silently looked for a way around… a way to leave before the creature hurt him.
The creature gave a giggle. “Oh, they do that. I’m here to stand watch.”
“…watch? For… who?”
“The magical girl.” The creature stated. “Heroes of Light… the ones that take away our fun. Have you seen her?”
“Uh…no...” Bill wondered what he had wondered into. However at least there was a hope… there was ‘someone’ who could handle this. Someone who could fight these weird monsters… and maybe undo all this. Bill tried to analyse his situation… he had to get passed her to run- or stall to get the magical girl. “Good luck then…” Maybe if he didn’t ‘run’… that would mean she’d not be interested?
“…wait a sec.” The weird demon giggled flying to his face. “Why are you here and moving around? They haven’t unfrozen everyone…” She smiled. “You a wizard? There’s a bunch of them… even in this world…” She snapped her fingers. “Can you guess my power?”
Bill was quite terrified… but something told him not to show this weird creature any fear. He generally didn’t know how to react to things he was quite sure were ‘not real’ a minute ago… so why be afraid now? Maybe if he stalled her the magical girl would appear to deal with it? He resented having to be ‘saved’ by some girl but- he was way out of his element. These creatures were using magic to mess with the students! Still the demon wanted to play… so… he tried to play with her. “Well… let me have a think…” He said methodically. “I saw my teacher turned into a cat-girl… my friend into a harpy by one of them… so it seems that one has the power of transformation… specifically into mythological beings?”
“Oh yes! Miphia. It’s her speciality.” The demon-imp nodded. “Opening the gate of the mythological essence inside a person… among other possibilities.”
…. Did each imp have a speciality? Bill’s mind continued to race. “Miphia…” He repeated. “…and the other… caused my friend to change gender…” he could barely believe it! What he saw there… it was insane. That creature turned a few guys into a girls- and some girls into guys too, but it seemed she played ‘favourites’. She didn’t do it everyone…
The imp giggled in response. “Ha! Yeah, that was Breeze. Can you believe she used to be a guy once? Well until our Queen sorted that out. She’s much happier now and I rather think she enjoys doing it,” She giggled again. “You sure are quick to catch all that!” She floated right up to Bill’s eyes. “You sure are an interesting mortal. “so, what’s my power? Go on try to guess!”
Bill glanced around still stalling for time. Where was the magical girl! She had to be here soon! What was this creature going to do to him? ‘Unbelievable…’ he had to keep this up even longer. He was running out of time! He gave a slow, perhaps rather dramatic circle around the creature which… seemed to surprise her. “Hm.. what could it be… Emri…”
It was like a slap to the face- as much to Bill as it was to the strange imp… That name echoed through the corridors.
“…impossible… How…” The demon imp stared at him, stunned and shocked. There were only a few possibilities of this… scary possibilities. “…How do you know my name?” she fluttered slightly to the ground and looked to be taking a more defensive posture.
Bill was just as stunned. He had no idea why that name popped inside his head… but he had let it out. He had said it… and he knew it was right.
Emri was now watching and looking at Bill… evaluating him. There were a few options… some more plausible than others… Yet to her… there was only one possibility. She had to test it… Slowly the demon tried to use her power on him-
…only for the power to ‘bounce’. Bill blinked feeling like… something was trying to get inside his mind! He was able to shake it off though. He gave a slightly annoyed look to the demon.
“You’re…” she gulped slightly now as if afraid. “She’s here… She’s here!” The demon-girl suddenly fluttered down the corridors leaving Bill quite shocked and stunned as to what was going on…
“…they think I’m the magical girl or something?” Bill wasn’t sure if he could have felt more insulted…
Unfortunately, Bill was now outside the classroom as time in there started. He heard the screams as every student reacted to their strange, unexpected transformation. Many were running off…
The detectives began their work, trying to understand the situation. They were particularly interested in Bill though who though was in the classroom had not actually transformed. “So tell us son, what did you see?” he asked.
Bill wondered what he could say. That he saw three- well- four demons, three in a classroom all start transforming the students during what was essentially a ‘time stop’? “I thought I saw a light… and I ran out of the classroom.”
“uh huh… seems odd that you ran ‘so quickly’…” the detective said idly. “It’s just an odd behaviour given the… strange circumstances. Do you know what happened to your fellow students?”
“… some changes in gender… people turned partly into animals..uh…”
“Three counts of body swaps, animal additions, transformations, weird-stuff… and… ‘you’… unaffected by any of it… same class, same proximity… who happened to take a toilet break at the last moment…”
“Wait- you think -I- had something to do with this?!” Bill gasped as he considered his position of prestige. “Now look here! I was as surprised as anything! Hell, do you have a clue what might have happened if I stayed there?!”
“Yeah… and yet you ran off at just the right moment…”
Bill squirmed at that. As much as he was good at acting, he knew he was hiding something. Something insane… something he knew he wouldn’t be believed. There was nothing he could do but accept the suspicion placed on him. “Feel free to look into my past… you’ll find nothing,” he said. “I didn’t even know ‘magic’ was real until now!”
“…who said anything about magic son?” The detective asked.
Bill blinked. “Well- what else could it have been!” He said defensively. “You can’t tell me this was scientific!”
“Hm… Well, I admit, there’s nothing to indicate you had anything to do with this,” The detective explained. “People are scared you know… the school might get shut down. Nobody has an idea why this happened…”
…However Bill knew. Bill knew their names… their faces…
…and he knew he might have to do ‘something’… but one question was in his mind, why wasn’t he affected by them? Why did that spell not do anything on him… everyone else was frozen… time itself had frozen…except for him…
“…maybe an angel protected me…” he whispered.
