thegingernut

  "Please! There's got to be another way!" protested Charlie. "There isn't. We'll need blood test results. There's no way around that. Just give me your arm" I stated. "But it will hurt" xe protested. "Not much, its just a little needle" I scoffed. "Okay…" xe surrendered. I jabbed the needle into xir inner elbow. "OW!" xe excimed. "Sorry" I winced. I quickly drew a small phial of blood and withdrew the needle. "There, that wasn't so bad, was it" I stated. "YES IT WAS!" xe cried. "Couldn't you have used your powers to make it not hurt or something?" xe demanded. "Not really" I said. "Why not?" xe cried. "Because needles scare the piss out of me, to the point where I can't convincingly lie about them in my head" I said. I lined the needle up with my own vein and then closed my eyes and jabbed, barely keeping back tears.

  "Again!" excimed Rose. "You've pyed it five times already, please for the love of Abraham Lincon's secret third testicle stop it" cried Victoria. "Awww! Just one more time?" begged Rose. Without turning my eyes from the road, I tapped the previous track button on the car's CD pyer once to return to the start of the current track and a second time to return to the previous track. Then I pressed the repeat button twice to switch first to repeat all then to repeat single. It would py that singur track until I pressed the repeat button a third time to break the curse.

  Princess GooGoo's bubbly voice once again filled the car. "I absolutely, positively, implicitly, irresistibly LOVE TIDDIES! Itty bitty titties! Mega mongo tiddies! Bazar bazongo tiddies, multi and mono tiddies. I'm tal-king boobies!…" sang the recording. Victoria dramatically put her fingers in her ears, rolled her eyes deep into the back of their sockets and then began headbutting the headrest behind her. I ignored her.

  Rose, after hearing the song half a dozen times, was starting to pick up the lyrics and was mouthing along and then occasionally proudly shouting a word or two that she remembered and belting out the chorus when it came around. Charlie of course could sing the song from memory, even the bridge that required you sing forty-eight sylbles back to back without breathing at two hundred and ten beats per minute. It would be impressive if xe wasn't completely tonedeaf. Leah was just tapping out a beat on her p, happy to be included.

  (Alice was helping her mum with chores. Victoria would go back for her once we got to the mall. Theoretically none of us needed to go at all save Victoria, and perhaps myself to navigate. But company makes a road trip better and Charlie would be like a lost puppy if I left xir on xir own and Rose didn't have anything else to do today and Leah wanted to spend the day with Rose and maybe me too)

  "I am BEGGING you to turn that off" Victoria moaned. But it speaks to my soul" replied Rose cryptidly. "Its annoying" snapped Victoria. "HOW DARE YOU SPEAK ABOUT OUR QUEEN LIKE THAT!" yelled Charlie. Loud enough to make my ears ring. "SHUT UP CHARLIE" I thought. "It sounds like a mad Emily impersonator having a stroke" said Victoria. Charlie didn't reply because xir voice wasn't working.

  "Look, Victoria… I'm sorry you find it annoying but… everyone else in the car loves it. Could you please just tune it out. I haven't seen Rose this excited since… ever" I pleaded. She shot me a stink eye. Subconsciously I leaned away from her. There was a tense silence. "I'll buy you another piercing!" I offered meekly. Her eyes regarded me like I was some sort of spider she was resisting the urge to crush. "Okay fine!" she eventually snapped. "Thanks Victoria" I smiled. "I want a nose ring" she said abruptly. "Good choice, it would make you look super punk" I said. Charlie kicked the back of my seat.

  "SPEAK" I thought. "Vanessa, Rose is tickling me, make her stop!" cried Charlie. In the rear view mirror I saw Rose's hands snap to her p. "Ugh, that's cheating Charlie. You forfeit" said Rose. "But! No! I didn't mean to!" cried Charlie. "Not sure what xir's on about Rose, but it was actually my bad" I said. "Oh, we were pying a game where Charlie has to be completely quiet while I tickle xir and if xe manages to stay quiet until the next freeway exit xe gets a kiss" expined Rose. "Sounds like fun" I smiled. "It was fun and you made me lose" pouted Charlie.

  "You kicked the back of my seat dude. You don't want me interfering with your junk don't interfere with mine" I clucked. "It was an accident!" pouted Charlie. "Tough shit. You, of everyone here, should know not to kick the driver" I replied. "There goes the exit. Okay, if you can hold out till the next one without making a sound or kicking Vanessa's chair, you get a kiss. Ready?" Rose smiled maliciously. "Yes mommy" Charlie meeped.

  "This isn't the mall I met you in" noted Charlie. "I got kidnapped on the way home from that mall. Wasn't exactly pnning on going back" I replied. "Okay, fair point. HEY! Do you think we'll get kidnapped on the way home from this mall?" asked Charlie. "Why would you say that? You were a good person before you said that! You're going to give me a Todd damned panic attack" I excimed.

  "Sorry!" excimed Charlie. "Its fine but don't ever do it again" I pouted. In spite of parking even further from the door than st time we were not accosted by expensive dentistry masquerading as men, which was a shame because an increased budget would have been nice.

  Even after stocking up on medicine for both me and Charlie, there was a hundred and twenty dolrs left over from the medicine pot. And since I was probably going to go through it nowhere near as fast as expected, I felt perfectly happy committing the remainder to the fun pot. Minus fifty dolrs for Victoria's nose ring that would be… "Hey Charlie, what's three hundred twenty dolrs minus fifty dolrs split six ways?" I called. "Forty five dolrs each" xe replied. "Capital" I smiled.

  First we found a bathroom so Victoria could go fetch Alice. We didn't get accosted by terfs but an old dy did shoot Charlie a pretty angry gre. She didn't seem up for engaging thought. Which was smart. I wouldn't start a fight with Leah either, even knowing I could fell her with a thought. Besides moral considerations like "being nice" and "wanting to french kiss her" she was in fact quite intimidating and my lizard brain was telling me not to start anything with her. God knows what the stranger thought, with no further context than short hair, taller than most men and thighs you could crack a skull with.

  We dropped Victoria off at the tattoo parlor next. I gave her some twenties and told her we'd be back for her in about half an hour. Then we hit the charity shops. Rose found an old sony portable CD pyer for twenty dolrs. Search as we might, we couldn't find a copy of "The Bad Girl All the Good Girls Want To Be So They Can Get the Bad Girl" to go with it, but I promised I'd buy her a copy new if one didn't turn up by the end of the day. (Or burn one. I think I have bnk CD-Rs at home, and its not like CDs have any sort of copy protection besides that malware sony shipped back in the noughties…)

  Leah found and insisted I purchase her a dog leash and colr. Neither I nor Charlie could contain our ughter for several straight minutes, and every time Leah demanded an answer she received only innuendo. Eventually I realized she genuinely didn't understand what we were ughing about.

  "The colr's for you, right?" I said. "Yeah, so?" she replied. "Okay, you know people wear colrs as a fetish thing, right?" I asked. "They do?" she asked with a completely straight face. "Oh yeah. Actually, is there a second one there so Vanessa can walk me?" asked Charlie. I genuinely couldn't tell if xe were being needlessly cruel in xir teasing, or shamelessly horny. The teenaged boy manning the till tripped over his own feet and nded in a heap.

  "Its nothing like that! I'm just Rose's puppy, okay?" she said, in a tone of denial. Charlie started ughing again. "But… not in a sexual way?" I asked bnkly. "How can you be a puppy in a sexual way?" squeaked Leah. "Remind me to show you what pet py is ter" Charlie gasped hysterically. "But I…" protested Leah. Suddenly I felt a pressure on my throat. I turned to see Rose, thunder in her eyes. "I YIELD" I thought desperately. The pressure subsided.

  "Its not a sex thing, its been our thing since we were little kids" Rose bit out furiously. "Oh, I used to pretend to be a fox a lot when I was little. Now I want a fox tail and fox ears and to bang a pretty catgirl. Little furries grow into big furries y'know!" said Charlie sagely. Rose started force choking xir. Xe grinned perversely.

  "Its not a sex thing. There's no dogs in town, okay? There used to be, but unlike witches they don't just turn up all the time, so the dogs that were there became so inbred that the elders decred it was too cruel to keep breeding them. So there's no pets. Only Rose always wanted a puppy. She'd read about them in story books. So I told her I'd be her puppy. My powers grew in that night" Leah expined.

  "Awkkkkk! Thaks sooooooo ro-man-tak!" gargled Charlie. Rose released xir from the pressure with an annoyed eyeroll. "I'm sorry for teasing, I… didn't know" I said weakly. "She got bullied for it for a while" muttered Rose. "Huh?" I asked. "She got bullied a lot for acting like a real dog all the time. Kids were really cruel about that. But she never… she still… went along with it… because she wanted me to be…" Rose choked. There were tears in her eyes. I dashed over to give her a hug. "Shhhhh… Its okay. I'm not judging. You want to do sexual petpy stuff with your puppy you do that. And if you just want to take her on a walk through the mountains you can do that. I won't judge you. I promise" I soothed.

  "I'm not judging either but I am jealous and I want someone to walk me on a leash" said Charlie. There was silence for a few moments. "I'll do it!" volunteered Alice. "Sweet!" smiled Charlie. "You don't have to" I told her. "Eh, maybe it will be fun. I don't know what “pet py” is but the sound of it is making me feel all tingly in my tummy" she beamed.

  We did wind up finding a copy of "The Bad Girl All the Good Girls Want To Be So They Can Get the Bad Girl" in another charity shop. I also stumbled upon a butterfly knife with a pretty bismuth-like painted metal handle. It was the entirety of my share of the budget, plus a little extra for luck. Nobody stopped me from buying it. I smiled as I twirled it. It felt good to have repced that piece of me, that I hadn't had since the prison.

  Alice begged me to buy her an Elsa dress again. I expined I still couldn't afford it. "Just use the avocado money, its not like the elders counted it!" she pouted. "That wouldn't be honest sweetie" I sighed. "But I'd look so pretty" she cried. "You'd look pretty in anything sweetie. Literally anything. Which was true. She could shape herself to any dress and modify her body at will to make the most modest garment look obscene.

  I didn't tell her about the replica I was constructing for her back at my log cabin. I wanted to surprise her. It was weird. Normally I had trouble finishing projects, but knowing that this one was for her, that I'd be letting someone down, lit a fire within me I could never have imagined before I met her. It would likely be ready by our next outing.

  Charlie didn't ask for anything. When I asked, xe told me xe already had everything xe could ever want for materially.

  After we were done shopping in the mall, we returned to the hospital where I'd dropped off the blood samples that morning. We took those to a random physician who informed us that just as expected, Charlie's hormonal bance was completely within the expected range and xe was told to take a very standard dose. Meanwhile my E levels were far outside of safe and the guy spent a good twenty minutes yelling at me for being irresponsible and stupid, before prescribing exactly the dose Charlie had guessed in the first pce, but telling me not to start taking it for ten days to give my liver time to metabolize my levels back down to a safe margin.

  Then Charlie asked a bunch of very technical follow up questions that left me and the doctor completely lost before losing xir temper and just grabbing the blood test results and storming out.

  Victoria drove us back to town. She refused to let us listen to any more Princess GooGoo, which I accepted on the rule that the driver picks the song. Sadly, the good luck that had deprived us of the company of terfs and twats did not extend to pigs, and in spite of Victoria staying far within speed limits, we heard sirens and in the mirrors I saw them gesturing for us to pull over.

  "What do I do?" cried Victoria, and edge of panic to her voice. "Pull over, put your arm back and be ready to teleport out like st time" I said. "Shouldn't we just teleport out immediately" she gasped. "Not yet. No need to do anything so risky yet" I said. I reached under the seat to confirm the presence of the P20 that had been in the car since the prison incident. Still there.

  I gred at the approaching officer in the rear view mirror. Suddenly he stopped and stood there in a daze. His partner exited the cruiser and walked up to stand beside him. They both took their guns and pced them on the ground. Then they stripped down to their underpants before finally approaching. "Why did you pull us over today officer" I said in a dangerously calm voice.

  "Well I saw your friend with the blue hair and thought y'all might be up to no good" said officer one. "Did you have any other purpose or justification for stopping us" I demanded. "Nope!" he said cheerfully. "What would you have done if you failed to find reasonable cause to further harass us?" I lilted. "Oh, there's always reasonable cause if you know where to look" chirped back officer one. I gritted my teeth. "Well then… I guess the only question is what do I do with you two…" I pondered.

  "Make them pregnant!" voted Charlie. I eyed xir in the rear view mirror. "Charlie, my power is mind control, how the hell would that even work?" I said. "Just have them keep ****** in each others asses until they get pregnant" xe stated as if this were simple arithmetic and not pure sci-fi. "That's rape Charlie" I pointed out. "No its not" xe said bnkly. "It literally is. Mind controlled people can't consent" I stated.

  "You should kill them" offered Victoria. "NO!" I excimed. "They wanted to put your friend in a cage forever for having blue hair" she pointed out. "That's true, we do want to put your friend in a cage forever for having blue hair" volunteered officer two. "That's not a good reason to kill them!" I excimed.

  "You should make them beat each other up" suggested Leah. "That's… not a terrible suggestion, maybe we'll come back to that one" I said. "Oh, making them beat each other up is fine but not making them fuck?" cried Charlie indignantly. "Well yeah! Of course!" I excimed back. "Why?" xe demanded. "Because making them have sex is a huge consent viotion!" I pointed out.

  "And making them beat the shit out of each other isn't?" Charlie asked sarcastically. "Well no because…" I trailed off. Wait, was I only seeing a difference because the topic of consent is emphasised for sex in particur, leaving me with blind spots for other contexts where it might be important? Okay, something to contempte ter. Right now I have two mostly naked cops who need some sort of ironic and karmatic punishment for what was probably a first amendment viotion if they were stupid enough to admit what they'd done in court. Hmm. Well that made it obvious.

  My brain loaded up a memory of drowning like loading a gun. "I'm gonna step out of the car for this. You really don't want to get caught in the crossfire" I cautioned. I stepped out of the car and led the two mostly naked cops far enough away so none of my friends would be in the trauma radius. Then I let the memory loose. Falling. Freezing. Couldn't breathing. Crying. Dying. Asking whying.

  "IF YOU LIE, THIS WILL HAPPEN. IF YOU LIE, THIS WILL HAPPEN. IF YOU LIE, THIS WILL HAPPEN. IF YOU LIE, THIS WILL HAPPEN. IF YOU LIE, THIS WILL HAPPEN" I thought furiously. It might not take, or if it does they might overcome it quickly. Or maybe I just ended both of their careers by giving them both a crippling fear of lying. Whatever. Its not like they'd give a second thought to Charlie's life if they'd arrested xir. I directed them to get in their car and drive off. And also to forget the entire encounter. That could become a problem. They didn't think to put their clothes back on before getting in their car and driving off. What I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall at their next traffic stop. I returned to the car.

  "Vanessa, are you crying?" asked Victoria. "YES I'M CRYING I JUST RELIVED MY WORST TRAUMA THANK YOU FOR ASKING!" I snapped. "Sheesh! I only wanted to help" cried Victoria, and then she left me alone for the rest of the drive.