Which Witch is Which Again
By Jesse Rabbit

“What do you mean you can’t fix it?” I practically yelled at one of the sweetest, kindest, nicest old ladies in this or any other universe.

She blinked at me in her somewhat near-sighted way, sipped her cocoa, and shook her head sadly. “Are you sure you don’t want any hot-chocolate, Andy? Its lovely and warm.”

“Aunty Claire,” I half-groaned, half-growled. “I hate chocolate… and I don’t want to be a girl.” I barely resisted the urge to tell her to stop calling me Andy, a nickname I’ve always hated.

“I thought you liked having magical powers, dearest.” She reached out one wrinkled hand and a newspaper flew to her as if on a wire. She peered at an article for several seconds, still sharp eyes flicking back and forth with keen intensity. “Here it is. ‘Young Andrea Parker, the super-sexy Vampwitch, said, when asked, ‘I really like the speed, and being able to fly isn’t so bad, but the strength… yeah, that’s the best. I lifted a truck, a big one, with one hand and then threw it like it weighed nothing. It was awesome!’” She looked up from the page and quirked an eyebrow at me. “Sounds like you like it.”

I clenched my teeth and growled, “They called me Andrea! And I didn’t ask you to take away the powers… just the part where I turn into a girl!” My voice had gone up, sounding a little shrill and just this side of screaming. Aunty Claire just fixed me with her myopic eagle stare until I broke eye contact and slumped back in the chair. “Sorry,” I half-muttered.

She patted my hand. “Oh Andy, it’s not that bad. It’s only when those horrid Demons attack. And then poof, back to being a boy.”

“Yeah, but the news says that attacks in major cities are coming practically every day now. How soon before New Salem sees that kind of activity? What if it gets worse? Like two or three attacks a day? What if this is a full scale invasion and then I’ll be stuck as a girl all the time, fighting off wave after wave of creepy-ass Demon goons.” I covered my face with my arm, leaning back, trying to keep from crying or screaming or hyperventilating. The news and the pundits were not exactly being calming to my nerves.

“Now that’s just silly.” She set down the paper and took a sip before continuing. “If it is a full scale invasion, I’d like to think my grandnephew would be more concerned about saving the Earth from devastation than worrying about what kind of underwear he was wearing.”

I flushed, inwardly acknowledging that the old lady had a point. It was frustrating but true; I hated turning into a girl, but couldn’t complain in public. It was, as my dad had put it, a kind of sacred trust. We’d been chosen by the magic to defend our town, our friends, our families. I’d have to be a real shmoo to say, “Sorry, I can’t be bothered to save you, I’m too much of a wuss to turn into a girl for a few minutes.”

“But why,” I asked, trying to keep all traces of whining out of my voice, “do I have to be a girl? Couldn’t I keep the powers and turn into a cool male vampire?”

“Like that nice Cullen boy in that movie?”

I shuddered, “Noooo…. Like Dracula… the younger version, or…” I struggled to think of a younger, but still cool and manly vampire… and totally blanked. “Okay, so most Vampires are either old or lame or gay… except Eddie Murphy and Count Orlok… but still… Why?”

“That nice Applewick fellow said that it would be good for tourism and merchandizing and all if we had some cute / sexy witchgirls as our defenders. And defensive magic does tend to favor girls over boys. We told him, though, that there has to be a balance. Either a mixed team, like New York has, or a mature male mentor to very young female heroes like Townsville, or even an adult man lusting after junior high-school girls like Tokyo has… although I hear at least two of those girls are…” she dropped her voice and whispered the last word, “lesbians.”

I sighed. “So let me get this straight. I am the ‘Male’ side of the equation?”

Aunty Claire chuckled and kicked me in the shin. “Don’t be ridiculous boyo! Doesn’t he have an overinflated sense of his own masculinity?” she asked Oscar, her ferrety familiar. Oscar yawned but failed to comment. “No, Andy, there are other masculine forces at work. A male mayor. All five of your teammates have prominent fathers: a Principal, a Rabbi, the head of the biggest Lawfirm in town, the Chief of Police, and the town’s biggest restaurateur. But yes, you are the eldest member of the team, and the only boy, so I guess you are a significant amount of balance… although that Lupe girl is very tomboyish.”

“Umm… Aunty… there are only five of us… we don’t have a member whose dad is a school principal.” I knew who the others were: Simon Guzman was Chief of Police, Yosef Wiesse was a Conservative Rabbi, Franklin Fair was an ex-baseball player turned restaurateur, and Gwahar Ramses was my dad’s boss. They were good guys, but their prestige had led to several arguments about which girl should be the team captain.

Francine, the teams strongest member, didn’t want the post, and seemed fairly embarrassed every time her dad brought it up. Lupe, our best fighter, would have been the best leader, she was level headed and diplomatic, but as Wolfwitch she was almost impossible to understand, since she both growled and spoke far to fast. Miriam and Demi, the team’s magical powerhouses, both wanted the position, but there were problems with that. Demi’s dad refused to let the twelve year old be in charge, but I think he also had a problem letting a muslim boss his little girl around, while Miriam’s dad, a far more rational individual, refused to let a girl with bipolar disorder be in charge. Which left me, by default, giving most of the orders. Of course, since as Vampwitch, I could fly and run faster than any other member of the team. That combination gave me a better idea of what was happening, and since I was the eldest, I’d accepted with (admittedly poor) grace. I’d promptly appointed Lupe as team spokesman and tried to fade into the background.

In the week since our first fight, the town had been attacked twice more. Both times I’d been the first on scene. We’d… killed… dispatched… banished… defeated, I guess, a dozen Demons… no two alike. The internet was buzzing with details and theories. Wikipedia had created a new branch, Demontracker, with casualty lists, damage totals, and profiles on all 1500+ confirmed Demons and almost twice that number of defenders, many of whom had never seen combat. Cities across the planet were scrambling, trying to build or assemble their own teams or sign mutual defense pacts with neighboring cities.

And the biggest story of the day? New Salem’s Mayor. By far the smallest city to actually be hit, New Salem’s creation of a Anti-Demon Squad, originally seen as little more than a publicity stunt, has been seen as remarkably prescient. Of the planet’s top 200 most populous cities (or metropolitan areas, since places like Tokyo and New York are actually several cities combined) not even half had been hit. In fact, aside from suburbs, the smallest city to be hit (aside from New Salem of course) was Havana… population over two million. New Salem? Yeah, ninety-one thousand… and that’s only when you include Northvale and Webberly, our “sub-urbs”. And we’re nowhere near a big city. In fact, the nearest big city is over 60 miles away.

Still, lucky for us, I guess, considering how much damage LA took from just two demons before the army finally managed to defeat them. Never been to Disney Land… guess I never will.

“Andy… honey, are you asleep?” Aunty Claire’s voice snapped me out of my reverie.

“No Aunty, just thinking. Isn’t there anything you can do?”

“I could turn you into a girl full time.”

“No!” I snapped upright, hoping to see a teasing smile on her wizened face, but she just looked at me calmly. “No. Nonono… No thank you. Please. No. Uh uh. No way. I just… I meant…”

“Yes?”

“Couldn’t you make the outfit a little less…”

“Less?”

“Skimpy? Revealing? Sexy? Cute? And do I have to have such big… you know. I mean, sure, its great not having to worry a Demon’s gonna smash me in the jewels, and I’ve never had to, you know, take a whiz in costume, but seriously… I could put an eye out with those things. I think they’re getting bigger with every transformation.”

I don’t know what I was expecting, but I wasn’t expecting her reaction. She burst out laughing so hard that it took a good five or six minutes for her to catch her breath and she had to magic up a bit of chocolate off her table cloth. “What?” I asked, half afraid to set her off again.

“Andy, darling, dearest… You control that aspect of your transformation. We didn’t exactly do up costume designs and such. We just tossed a few manga, some fashion mags, some holloween candy, some old videos, and a book or two into the cauldron and asked the magic for a team of cute witch defenders indeally suited to fight the Demons. Actually, we were surprised you girls turned out to be monsters. We’d tossed those movies in to represent the Demons.” She chuckled. “Good thing we didn’t end up with Godzilla Witch, heh.”

I groaned and slumped back. “So you’re telling me that my… boobs… are getting bigger because I’m worrying about them getting bigger?” She nodded. “Awww… heck!”

“Don’t worry sweety. Just relax and smash heads… You’re very good at it.”

“Claire?” Aunty’s partner Abbigal yelled from the front room.

“Yes?”

“You’d better tell Andy to get ready.”

Aunty Claire didn’t have to tell me twice; I was already heading out the door at my magically enhanced speed (yeah, I had to drop out of track, seems the powers never go completely away, even in “normal mode”. No one thought it was fair to compete against someone who runs the 100 meter dash in less than a second.). Abby may be a flake, but she has the sight and she’s almost never wrong.

She wasn’t wrong. As I ran down the street, letting the transformation wash over me, I launched myself into the air, just in time to see a streak of whitefire blaze up across town. Great, it’s a happy day… joy. Still, time enough to get the insulin after the beasties were put down. I scanned the town and found my quarry.

Four Demons. Big, ugly, stupid, annoying Demons… threatening the public swimming pool at Thurman Park. I felt my annoyance and anger wash over me and with a high pitched roar of rage I charged. The fight was brutal, fast, and very, very wet.

Ever seen a fifteen year old frankengirl demonstrate the effects of lightning on a swimming pool full of giant warkoala? Yeah… way cool. Angelwitch was useless, as usual, unless one considers an invulnerable distraction somehow useful. I don’t. She just stood there looking vacuous while the Demon that looked like a cybernetic squid pounded on her wings and halo. She actually asked it if it liked her fingernail polish. Ah well, here’s hoping we have Devilwitch when we actually need her. Lupe wasn’t happy about getting wet… and we weren’t happy with the smell, but thankfully the magic wore off as soon as Miriam’s bandages finished crushing the ‘life’ out of the beaver-turtle Demon.

Of course, it made the news, big surprise since Thurman Park is across the street from our local news station. Ah well, I’m certain wet Vampwitch pictures will be all the rage now.

I’m tired. Gonna hit the hay… just as soon as I make one small change to my wiki-entry. “Vampwitch does not like chocolates, flowers, or human blood. Please send the first two to Frankenwitch and the third to the Red Cross.” Strange how that keeps being deleted. You’d think someone was trying to annoy me.

This stuff is copyright me, 2010. Violate it and taste the wrath of Godzillawitch!