Friday, August 30st, 2041 - Evening

“You don’t have to go,” Aunt Maya tried to convince us one last time as she practically crushed both my sister, Kelly, and her daughter, Ainslee, in a hug. “You can stay here at home with us. That goes for all of you, you will always have a home here with us.”

Thankfully, Poppy and I were both small enough as Sprites that we could avoid being crushed in her arms like that. We likely wouldn’t have survived the experience anyway. She and the twins had already given us far more gentle hugs before getting ahold of Ainslee and Kelly.

“Mom, we’ve been over this,” Ainslee replied with a sigh as she hugged her mother in return. “It’s not like we have to pay for our dorm room, and things will be much easier for all of us if we’re on campus. Besides, Karen could really use our support, we’ve arranged to share a dorm room with her, and Lily already has Moonlight’s stall set up in the stable there.”

Kelly quickly added, “It’s not like we’ll be far away either, Aunt Maya. We’ll be just across town, and we can all come for dinner or visits when we have the time.”

Samantha and Selina seemed to be taking this as hard as their mother was. The Mermaid twins loved their sister, of course, but they grew up with me and Kelly too. We kids all grew up like family, and all of them had just gotten used to having us back in their lives over the past few weeks after thinking that we were either dead or captured by Titans.

There were more hugs and a lot more tears as the four of us promised to call them once we were settled in and climbed into Karen’s hover-jet. The Dark Elf had loaned the luxury model vehicle to Ainslee and Kelly so we could move our stuff to the dorm after we had helped her move everything that she wanted to bring from her room at the base and from her home a couple of days ago. It showed just how much our relationship with our prickly teammate had improved over the past couple of weeks.

Karen was starting to let us in more, and I liked to think that she was starting to trust us more as well. The walls that she kept up between herself and others wouldn’t be easy to break down by any means, but we were seeing more cracks in those walls by the day, at least where we were concerned. She was still cautious and prickly around other people, but it seemed like she was starting to accept us as real friends rather than people she was being forced to spend time with since that clusterfuck of an assignment to take down Alistair Davenport, the asshole who was stalking her and had plans to do a lot worse.

I was glad that she was starting to trust us, and her hover-jet had a lot more space than Aunt Maya’s, and made it so we were able to get everything we wanted to bring to the dorm with us in one trip. Not that any of us had much to bring. My sister and Ainslee had almost a dozen mid-sized boxes between them, packed with their clothes and a few personal effects, and Moonlight’s stuff was already in her stall at the university stables. As for me and Poppy, everything we owned was packed in my new little house. Once we were all settled into the vehicle and Kelly got into the driver’s seat to take us across town to the University grounds, I snuggled with Poppy on one of the far too large seats and thought about my family and my life since I woke up and broke free from the grisly cocoon that had once been my body.

Honestly, we were all lucky to be alive and together after the Incursion that had decimated our hometown of Boulder Creek, Montana and the surrounding area, including the ranch where Kelly and I grew up. The farm next door, which belonged to Aunt Maya and Uncle Gavin, was the epicenter of the Incursion, and both of our homes had been destroyed by the Titans. Somehow, though, most of us had come through the attack alive and had found one another again in Amethyst Harbour.

Some of the people we cared about hadn’t been so fortunate. Our father and Uncle Gavin had both been killed in the attack, Mom and Kelly were taken through the Breach as captives, and Aunt Maya had spent months in the hospital after nearly dying when their house collapsed with her inside. Kelly may have come back to us somehow, but she wasn’t unscathed.

I think Kelly had the worst of it, in fact. My sister spent most of the last four years as a Titan captive before being discarded during an Incursion in Egypt when she became Altered due to what the doctors said was exposure to Wild Magic and elevated hormone levels from being pregnant. From what little she could remember during the nightmares she still had almost every night, being a captive of the Titans was a fate worse than death.

The way they treated her and the things she told me that they made her do made me sick and filled me with a burning fury, especially when I thought about our mother still being in their hands. Kelly couldn’t even control her own body to tell them no, no matter how hard she had tried. Then, when she was finally back on Earth, she had to deal with her changing body, losing the baby, and believing that she had lost everything and everyone she cared about.

She was locked up in the mental ward and on suicide watch when we reunited, not that she could have succeeded since she was seemingly invulnerable now. Both of us were very different from how we used to be. She was now a nine-tailed Huli Jing and burdened by her trauma and a power that wouldn’t let her take the easy way out, while I was now a five-inch-tall Water Sprite.

Until I ‘sprouted’ a couple of months ago, I was in a gory cocoon made from my former body and skipped out on the past four years while my new Sprite body grew inside. Getting used to being a girl (well, sort of, since Sprites only have one gender) and being a five-inch-tall Fairy was easy compared to finding out I lost four years of my life when I became Altered and thinking that everyone I cared about was captured or killed in the Incursion that changed me. At least I had Moonlight to keep me somewhat sane while I adjusted to things, and I met Poppy while I was in the Fairy Ward of the hospital.

Now, I couldn’t imagine my life without the Unicorn and my Fire Sprite girlfriend, and on top of having them in my life and being reunited with my sister as well, we were also reunited with Aunt Maya, Ainslee, and the twins. They were different, too; the twins were Mermaids now, and Ainslee was a girl and a Baobhan Sith, but there was one thing that would never change. We were like family, and we loved one another. It was probably a good thing that we weren’t really related, though, because Ainslee finally worked up the nerve to ask Kelly to be her girlfriend last week.

The past couple of weeks, since our camping trip and the sting operation to bring Alistair Davenport to justice, were actually pretty hectic overall. Between training hard individually with our trainers to master our magic and the other abilities that our respective Altered species possessed, and group training sessions for Incursions under the watchful eye of Sergeant Vale, we were all very busy girls. In fact, someone had sent the sergeant footage from our fight with Davenport and his hired muscle, and after pointing out absolutely everything we did wrong, he insisted on giving me some extra lessons in battle tactics as well.

I would probably be learning more of that once we started at the University, since I would be taking the officer’s track, but he wanted us ready in case my teleportation ability was needed to drop troops at an Incursion. At least the Incursion simulations that he was putting us through now were not quite as brutal as that first day when he had pushed all of us almost to the point of breaking. These sims weren’t no-win scenarios like that first time, either; there was a way to win if I was clever enough and we worked together. We might have lost more than we won so far, but I liked to think that we were improving.

It probably helped a lot that we were getting used to the stomach-churning things that we were seeing during those simulations and were freezing up less. Hell, some of the things that we had seen, done, and experienced during the fight with Davenport and his goons might have helped with that, but I also think that we were all starting to come to terms with the reality that this was war and that if we were reduced to a blubbering mess during battle it could mean that our teammates and civilians would pay the price. None of us wanted that.

Our teamwork was improving as well, and maybe that was because Karen was starting to feel more like a member of the team. She wasn’t as closed off, she trusted us more, and the animosity was disappearing now that we were all on more friendly terms. We still had disagreements sometimes, of course, but now it was getting easier to put those aside and focus on the task at hand.

Training hadn’t been the only thing keeping us busy recently, though. On Wednesday, we helped Karen move her stuff into the dorm after a couple of hours of Incursion simulations with Sergeant Vale, but we had all been too tired to do much more than that, so we put off moving Kelly’s and Ainslee’s things until later. Then yesterday, we spent the afternoon after our individual training sessions doing a major shopping spree.

Poppy and I both had to replace everything we lost when the Sprite-sized house I was gifted was destroyed. I had to buy a new house too, using the money that I got to replace my worldly possessions when Davenport’s accounts and assets were all seized by the Vanguard. That hadn’t been finalized until yesterday, though, so I didn’t have the funds to replace everything until then. So, we spent a lot of the day shopping, which was why we didn’t get to moving into the dorm until today.

My new house wasn’t quite as fancy-looking as the one I had before, but it was more practical and probably a whole lot more durable since Vice-Commander offered to have one of the Vanguard’s defense magic specialists place some protective wards on it for me. It was still somewhat large, boasting three bedrooms, a living room, a bathroom, and a kitchen, though this time, the kitchen had a sink for cleaning dishes and a tiny wood stove that looked like it was painstakingly crafted for both appearance and utility. It would allow us to cook when we wanted to and keep the kitchen warm if it got cool. The kitchen also had plenty of counter space, small cupboards, a pantry, and space for a table and chairs.

Much like my previous Sprite-sized house, this one also had working electricity, lights, heating, a fireplace, and a bathroom with running water for the bathtub and sink, and a magical equivalent of a toilet for our size that disintegrates waste. All of the water in the house came from an indoor, heated reservoir and was filtered through a water purification system before being recycled. The internal walls of the house were painted in soothing colors like mint green, lavender, and baby pink, with white trim and doors.

One thing that I was on the fence about was that instead of having plush carpet like my previous house, this one only had carpet in the bedrooms. The rest of the floors were ceramic due to the wood stove and fireplace, which I guess made sense for safety and fire prevention. I wasn’t thrilled about it, but it was a necessary evil, and overall, the new house was very comfortable and cozy.

The exterior was much like my former house, except that the paint was white with a light blue trim rather than a mostly solid powder blue. It still had proper windows, chimneys for both the fireplace and wood stove, and weatherproof walls and roof, so I could still place it either indoors or outdoors as needed. It even had one of the little magitech batteries that my last house had to draw mana from around them for power, but I guess that was something that the company was putting into all of the Fairy houses that they built. The power was only really used for the lighting and heat, but it would be a boon outside in winter when things got cold and the sun set a lot earlier.

After Poppy and I chose the house together, most of the rest of the afternoon and early evening were spent buying furniture for it and new clothes for us. We had bought a few outfits to last us until we could buy the house, but we needed a lot more clothes, especially with school starting so soon. I was glad that we had gotten all that done yesterday, because after another grueling Incursion simulation today, followed by putting everything in the house so it was ready to be moved while Ainslee and Kelly packed their stuff, I was looking forward to snuggling with Poppy in our comfy new bed tonight once we were all settled in the dorm.

I almost fell asleep on the ride there. I mean, I probably could have just teleported us all there with our stuff, but I had been pushing my special ability as hard as I could for the past two weeks, trying to increase the size of my area of effect and how many people and items in that range that I could carry with me. Frankly, I was exhausted, and I just didn’t have the energy to do that after a long week and a day full of training, something that Moonlight had noticed.

-I am glad that you took my suggestion and did not push yourself too hard, my Maiden,- the Unicorn’s voice said gently in my mind as Poppy and I flitted outside the car, and I stretched my aching muscles. -You have been working too hard recently.-

“I’ll be fine, Moonlight. It’s Friday, and we have the long weekend off from any sort of training until classes start on Tuesday,” I assured her, breathing a sigh of relief at the thought of a bit of rest and relaxation. “Why don’t you go to the stables and get settled in? I’ll probably be calling it a night early, and if I need you, I’ll call you in my thoughts.”

When she answered, it was with a measure of reluctance in her mental tone. -If you are certain, Lily. Sleep well. If you need me, I shall be there in a breath.-

Thankfully, it didn’t take too long to get everyone’s stuff into the dorm room. Poppy and I didn’t have much we could do to help at our size anyway, so we just needed to worry about placing the furniture and such properly in our new little house now that we were in the dorm room. So, while my sister and Ainslee started unpacking, Poppy and I set up our bedroom and decided to save the rest for the weekend before relaxing and talking with Karen, while we chilled on the empty bunk where our house had been placed.

The dorm room that we were in was larger than I was expecting, but I guess it had to be fairly big if it was expected to house four students, or five in our case. The plain white walls were not decorated so far, though there was evidence that they had once boasted posters or other decorations before the previous tenants moved out. The floor was covered in pale blue carpet, and the space seemed to be well-planned.

In each corner was a loft bed, and underneath those were desks with a desk lamp and a chair for studying. Beside the head of each bed was a tall dresser, maybe two feet wide, a foot and a half deep, and tall enough that the top drawer and upper surface could act as a nightstand for the loft bed, while at the foot of the beds were large trunks for gear and other belongings. There was even a mini fridge for drinks and snacks underneath the window that separated the two sides of the room.

As for the bathrooms and shower rooms, they were down the hall, with one on each floor. Even though Rainbow dorm was coed, we were on one of the girls' floors and wouldn’t have to worry about boys being around to bother us. This was something that Karen was understandably relieved about after the incident with Davenport.

We all called it a night early that night, not long after Kelly and Ainslee finished unpacking. In hindsight, that was probably a good thing, and not just because we were all tired from a long week. Because just after five in the morning, I was awoken from my slumber by a very loud and insistent noise emanating from my comm crown.

Feeling sluggish due to trying to rouse myself from hibernation, I fumbled for my comm crown, clumsily put it on, and then sleepily answered what turned out to be a call from Vice-Commander Carpenter. “Mmmm…. hello… Ma’am?” I answered, still trying to shake off sleep.

The Angel’s voice was carefully controlled and very serious as she spoke. -= Lily, thank goodness you answered. We need you. Our satellites just detected a Breach forming in the middle of Rio de Janeiro, and you’re the fastest method we have of getting troops on the ground there. =- I was suddenly very awake.