Establishing a room for magical experiments was not difficult… a few teachers raised some eyebrows, but exploring the issues and magic of Kublacon was not outside the rules. There were plenty that were unused rooms, most on the third floor. Though they did question how a bunch of college kids could work anything out, but given one of them was a victim… they decided to accept the proposal. An Essay on Kublacon, the transformations, for two credits work. One for the attempt, another if they find something of value. Convincing them of the second credit might be difficult.
Steven sat in a chair, her large tail hanging out the back waving lightly… Timothy was looking at her with a lot of curiosity and perhaps even awe. He studied her… noting her bare paws on her feet as well as that big fluffy tail. The young teenage human wanted to reach down and touch it… but resisted the urge. “…what…” Steven asked at his look, a little defensive. She was worried the way he looked… ‘Does.. he know?’ she placed her paws in her lap a little worried, which unconsciously gave out a more... feminine vibe.
Timothy looked embarrassed. He was looking at her, with… curiosity. “Well- I wanted to know Uh- so- do you… feel things?”
“Huh?” The question caught Steven off guard. “Feel… what?” Steven gave a bemused look at that.
“You know.” The teen pointed. “From your tail…” He was looing at it… so fluffy.
Steven glanced at her tail in confusion then back at him. She wasn’t sure quite what this was going to. “Well…yeah?”
The boy grinned. “That’s so cool! It’s so- totally real then?” He looked at the tail a little closer, noting how it joined up much like any other ‘animal’ to Steven’s spine. So animated and fluffy… “Maybe tell me about your costume idea? Why a squirrel? I heard the more popular ones are cats and foxes… even rabbits.”
Steven fumed at the memory. “I didn’t have a costume, at first. I saw a bunch of things, put them together…”
Timothy didn’t look convinced of that. “I heard that thoughts are part of it though… You would have looked more normal then, not something quite so… uh…”
“Furry?”
Timothy gave a wry smile and chuckled. “Well, you said it not me… I was going to say ‘compete.’ You are… a complete package. Despite not having much in your costume. You have something more like a fur-suit.”
Steven cringed. “Please, I’m not… that weird.” Was she? Maybe… she was. She looked away. She didn’t really want to get involved in this discussion. There was also a concern that Timothy was noticing her true gender… which would make their conversations even more awkward. “So, what’s your plan for the project?” Steven asked.
“I have already researched some key people who have changed. Dr Doom, A few dragons… I want to get that second credit…” Timothy reached into his bag and pulled out … a superman T-shirt. “We’re going to replicate the magic of Kublacon of course!”
Steven stared at him. The silence was deafening. “You want to… what?”
“Yeah! Imagine it… we could all become superheroes! There are superhero groups forming now, with an actual task force to fight evil aliens… we could join it! Or better yet make our own one.”
Steven stared at the T-shirt and then at Timothy… as well as herself. “Even if we did replicate the power, you said I was ‘complete’. This is… all I can ever be… now.” She wasn’t sure ‘how’ she knew it… but there was something about the magic of Xanadu that had a dimension to it. A dimension that meant you couldn’t ‘go back’ a step. Only forward… “There is no turning back…”
“We can upgrade you! Maybe you can become a Kryptonian squirrel. They have a Kryptonian dog, right?”
“Eh… I was never big on Superman.” Steven admitted.
“Oh? Who? Batman? Spiderman? X-men? Maybe we can get you a green lantern ring!”
Steven shook her head. “I guess… I like them all to some degree but… I had a soft spot for um-“ She turned away. No.. she couldn’t say it.
“You can tell me. I wont say a word! For what its worth I liked Shaira… even if she was a traitor.” Timothy was really into the comics.
Steven wasn’t even sure how to react wih someone who was this interested in geek culture. “Um- well-“ Steven gulped. “…sailor moon.”
Timothy looked at Steven, a slight smile… which went into a full hearty laugh. “Ha- HAHA- HAHAHA-“
“You said you wouldn’t laugh!” Steven felt her cheeks blush.
“I- I said I wouldn’t tell anyone… Oh man… that is priceless… ha! Sailor moon… sheesh… why!”
Steven flattened her ears. “…the.. stories… and relationships?”
“HAHAHAHA…” Timothy laughed again. “Suuuuure…”
Steven got up from the chair, her tail twitching a little angrily. “Do you want to do this project or not!”
After a while, Timothy started to calm down. “Yeah… well, we don’t know much about the magic of Xanadu but ‘you’ have some power… we should probably replicate what I saw with you in the basketball court…” He brought out a basketball from his gym back. “Just try… bouncing on it, imparting your energy into it, your ki, your…”
“Squirrel power?” Steven said deadpan.
“Yeah! Whatever it is you have…” Timothy watched curiously. “Go on! Bounce it!”
There were several attempts… Steven held the ball, bounced on it a few times, stared at it, made full body contact with it… but she didn’t feel like she was doing anything. “Sorry…” Steven said eventually after the tenth try. “It’s no working. I don’t think you saw what you think you saw.”
Timothy was also tired. It had been an hour… and they had no clue how to make it work. He held onto the superman T-shirt thoughtfully before packing it away. “We go some notes… let’s try again in a few days. If you have any supernatural experiences, would you… let me know?”
“I guess…” Steven nodded. It was nice to have a friend for once. Someone who was… actually interested in her.
… a boy was interested in her. She found herself blushing. “Stop it- no- he doesn’t know…” She had to keep it a secret.
The demon girl, Chandra, felt good… despite being a mere ghost in the physical world.
Yes, it was slightly inconvenient… but she used the time to learn more about the human world and the Great Event that was Kublacon. The research made her ponder her own nature… which had quickly snowballed into a universal-existential crisis.
‘What is real?’
She ‘assumed’ she was a creation… that all the other worlds were mere creations…only Earth was real. However, the more she thought about it, she realised that made no sense at all. It just didn’t ‘feel’ right to the demon-girl. So, what happened? What was real? What was not? Was it possible for a world to link itself to Earth in the form of an ‘idea’? Maybe ideas and worlds can work in parallel… with no creation at all.
What if … she wasn’t a creation of Kublacon itself but an idea, that came to be… well before Kublacon. Such a possibility could happen, couldn’t it? That felt believable and acceptable to her. It meant her own world was just as real too as the Earth... simply disconnected, until now.
“I am real…” She decided. She had to be… she felt it, deep down in the memories of her life, her history… her own family and personal quest. (Yes, a demon family was still a family, right?) Though she really hoped her mom wouldn’t pay a visit…not until she was more ‘settled’ on Earth. If she did, things could get very complicated. “All ideas… are real…”
The existential issue cast aside, Chandra wanted to find ways to entertain herself. The inability to ‘directly’ interact physically was starting to annoy her.
“If I could establish an identity in this world… I’ll exist… physically.” That was her plan. Bring herself into the world by ‘recognition.’ Some identity papers should help…
So far, a few kids have been able to sense her, some animals and the psychically inclined. She could also appear on digital devices, and she could exist in cyberspace where she met her new friend. She played in the dreamworld, the internet, and all the ‘sub’ levels of existence that were possible for her without a physical body… but she really wanted to be on Earth. Earth was… fun. To interact physically with everyone.
How she wanted to play! To be the wind and storm of chaos… she stirred things up a bit with dreams, making them a little more exciting… (No doubt a few woke up from either a nightmare scenario or had the best dream of their lives…)
The demon-girl decided to check up on Charles, the man who she seemed to exist within, before she arrived. She simply thought to be near him and it was made to be, like a door opening in reality with everything dissolving around her as her perspective shifted.
She appeared in a soft flash of grey light, manifesting in the back seat of a car, still invisible. The demon girl glanced around briefly disoriented by the sudden shift. Charles was driving the car… like that time when they first joined forces. She delighted in that memory… it was a good moment… She leaned forward to see him closely. “Hey, can you hear me?”
No response.
“Hm..” Chandra shook her head. “I guess I’ll get comfortable in here, until you acknowledge me…”
The radio broadcasted some news. ‘Police are still making enquiries on the transformation following some kind of road accident. If anyone was in the vicinity when this happened, please call. The occupants were turned into mermaids in what was described as an unprovoked attack.”
Charles listened to the radio with a guilty look.
‘Unprovoked?’ Chandra growled. ‘They totally deserved it! They cut us off!’ Chandra fumed. “They paid for it. People like that always bully the weak… they were lucky we didn’t turn them six inch dolls!”
Charles said nothing back… he probably couldn’t hear her.
The demon-girl looked to him. ‘Why do you ignore me… we did a good thing! We changed the lives of those people… they picked on the wrong person… they can’t look down on us… nobody can mess with us again, not with the power we have… we should unleash it… transform this whole town… the world… no humans at all… chaos…’ It was everything she wanted and was certain, everything Charles wanted…
It was frustrating. To have so much power, raw magical energy and it was in the hands of a ‘responsible adult’ who didn’t want anything to do with it. Denied… denied its use… she was denied! “I don’t get you…” She spoke with a slight quiver in her voice. Frustration rose in the demon. “Come on, I know you can hear me…” She kicked the seat invisibly. “Acknowledge me! I’m here!” It was one thing to make herself invisible, but Charles seemed to be making her invisible all by himself. The middle aged man made no reaction as he drove, burnt out from work.
Maybe… he really couldn’t hear her? Chandra felt a slight worry… had their link somehow been broken? Was that possible? “No… if it were broken, I’d be gone… back to where I came from…”
Where did she come from? From those realities torn asunder… mixed, merged, split apart… all that was imagined had become real, and it was now as if it had always been so. Chandra had a past… a linage… other demon kinds. They were real… Her mother… The Chaos Storm… Wind of Change. She had many names.
The demon girl laid down like a child in the back of the car waiting to be taken home. They were stuck in traffic. Everyone was acting with some level of courtesy though she could feel general tension from Charles. Otherwise, she would try to transform more people. She tried to tempt Charles into letting out that anger… “You sure I can’t just open the dimensional door again? They’ll transform into creatures… more fun than mere humans… I could use more chaos…” The truth was she had no control over the changes themselves. She could open the door to a realm of chaos, and it was that power that changed them… she might be able to nudge it, but it was like causing ripples in a torrent of a river.
Her magic was ‘slightly’ different from Xanadu. Xanadu created something that existed in the subject’s mind… Chandra however, could potentially transform a person into something that existed ‘outside’ of their mindscape. The results could be… less compatible? Maybe even drive one to madness. “How do I make you less boring…” Chandra wondered.
“Why am I so boring,” Charles muttered to himself.
Chandra blinked. “Huh?… Hey! can you hear me?” The man said nothing. “Great, you’re talk to yourself.” There wasn’t much to do… “I suppose I could hang out with Loki… he knew how to party back in the day. Eris wasn’t bad either… she made this nice apple strudel-” Partying with the gods could be fun, even if some had a ‘no demon’ policy… but the gods were often no different these days. Chandra was worshiped as a goddess in her own world after all.
They were home now. Charles’s home… a simple small flat. It was all he could afford with the money he got… he worked hard. All he did was work…
Chandra followed inside, floating as a breeze. She guessed Charles would feel a bit concerned on the lack of privacy… so she simply didn’t tell him. Not that she could… unless he wanted to hear. That was when she felt something… Charles’s heart sank.
“What the…” his house looked like it had been broken into…
Shattered glass of a window… Chandra looked around concerned. She felt an odd feeling as if… her realm had been invaded. She knew this feeling… she knew it very well.
Charles flew into a panic as he looked around his house, seeing things strewn about the place. “No… No!” He screamed. The truth was he didn’t have much besides what every other person might have. A few books, games, they had taken the television… but Chandra could feel her charge fall into despair… falling into darkness… he whimpered, crying… it was not so much what was taken, but the fact that it ‘could’ be taken… that someone targeted him.
Charles was going to call the police of course, but… he didn’t. Maybe he was afraid or maybe he just didn’t think it would do anything. “Help me…”
That seemed to be an invitation. “Hey…” Chandra whispered. “Charles I’m here.”
“…you… did you-“
“I had nothing to do with this! I told you, we’re allies… closer then friends… closer then even lovers.” She smiled faintly. “You’re my anchor on this world… you mean a great deal to me.” Chandra petted his head… and it seemed that this simple contact was enough to make the grown man fall into tears.
“They keep taking everything away from me! I make a little… they notice it… and take it. They keep taking! I can’t do this…”
“Shh…” Chandra hushed him. “I’ll fix it…”
“How…” He closed his eyes. He just… wanted is things back… even if it wasn’t much, they were his things… the thieves…
“First… a book of magic…” She gestured making it appear. “I’ll need to get a few things…”
“I- I don’t-“
“It’s easy! Once you summon me into this world, I’ll sort out the bad guys. Deal?”
Charles looked her over. He felt sick… but he was also tired of everyone always ‘winning’ against him. He looked at her. “…deal.”
It wasn’t how Chandra wanted to be brought to the physical world… but an invitation was an invitation.
