Liam knew where his life was going, or so he thought until an incident at football practice turns into his worst nightmare. And the fun is only beginning.

I want to thank Maggie Finson and all the other authors for creating the Whateley Universe. This story is Fan-fiction and may not conform to Canon rules or timelines. I am only playing in their sandbox. I also want to thank Connected for all the editing work put in to turn my scratchings into a readable story.

Please note that all of the categories checked do not apply to all chapters. I appreciate all the encouraging comments and kudos.

Mother’s Child

Chapter 5

Lee was too busy before he started back to school to dwell much on his problems. Coach had checked with his friends and found out that Sensei’s daughter was, indeed, a mutant so Lee had re-enrolled in his martial arts classes on Monday. He had met with the Sensei and told Kuroda Sensei everything he knew, then they had planned his continued instruction. He had put Lee through his katas and had briefly sparred with him to see how much he had retained. Then Sensei told him to come in at 9am on Wednesday, which surprised Lee since the dojo usually didn’t open until noon.

Kuroda Sensei had him at the dojo for two hours of individual instruction three mornings a week. He was relearning all the lessons he had neglected since dropping out of his aikido classes a year ago, when he decided to concentrate on football.

The Sensei’s appearance belied his abilities. A tiny, delicate man who was barely 5 feet tall, if that. He also seemed ancient to Lee, although he was probably only in his sixties. Lee knew he had been born shortly after World War II, in Saka, Japan. He had told his students once of how his parents told him of seeing the mushroom cloud from the atomic bomb, when it went off about ten miles from their home at the end of the war.

Karoda Sensei was a harsh task master, “As mutant, you will need every advantage you can get. Many people want to hurt you.”

When Lee tried to tell him how much stronger he was now, Sensei’s hand darted out and grabbed him by the wrist. Before Lee knew what had happened he found himself face down on the matt with a bloody nose.

“Strength only one part of equation, Cook-san. Must know how use strength, must read one’s honorable opponent, and know own strengths and weaknesses.” Karoda Sensai punctuated each point with a jab, twist, pressure on a nerve bundle, and finally by holding a iron crowbar against the back of Lee’s hand until he screamed as the flesh sizzled and burned. Lee found himself crouched in the corner holding his burned hand staring at Sensei with a betrayed look on his face.

Karoda Sensei stood and looked at him for several minutes, before starting more gently, “Lee, I not do this to cause pain, but make you understand no one, no matter how strong, cannot be hurt. More stronger you are, more those less powerful look for weakness. Must know own weaknesses to defend same from use by those who would cause harm.” He ended that lesson there, leaving Lee sitting in the Lotus position to meditate on his lesson for the remainder of the session. It was hard to focus with his hand still burning but it was mostly healed by the time he left.

————-

Next was the trip to the therapist, which was — therapeutic, — Lee guessed. It was good to able to talk openly about being a mutant. He vented a lot of anger and frustration. Lee hadn’t realized just how mad he was at fate, at his mother, at his father (both of his fathers), and at life in general. Dr. Bennett listened mostly, gently prodding the conversation when Lee started to wind down. After two hours of talking about it, Lee realized he wasn’t quite as angry anymore. Oh, he still had a lot frustration at life and the seemingly cruel joke it had played on him, but his misplaced anger at his family was mostly gone.

At the end of the session, she asked him if he had started Aikido lessons again yet. He hadn’t known she knew about the aikido.

She encouraged him to pay special attention to his meditation practice. She also had him start keeping a journal, (as opposed to a diary, which he told her was for girls) to record any changes he noticed, dreams, or other similar things, and how he felt about them. She wanted him to record his perceptions of how other people were reacting to him and his changes, as well.

The next couple of sessions were pretty much the same, but then she started him on some harder exercises involving role play of various situations. Most were situations he knew he would encounter when he started back to school. Then came some that Lee didn’t understand the purpose of at the time, although later they would make more sense.

She had him role-play situations from the point of view of a homosexual then a transsexual. When Lee asked about that she had just said that they faced similar problems of being ostracized and taunted by their peers to what he might face if or when his mutant status came out. Lee had a lot of trouble with those sessions.

That night after the session of role-playing transsexuals, Lee had a nightmare where he woke up an ugly manly looking girl and all of the people in his high school were laughing at him and worse. He got up and got out his journal. It took him nearly an hour to write down the dream that had left him bathed in sweat, and how it made him feel. However, when he went back to bed he slept dreamless for the rest of the night, his terror, embarrassment and fears locked safely away in the pages of his journal. Maybe Dr. Bennett did know what she was talking about.

**************

His lessons with Cantrip took up much of the rest of his time, and were interesting to say the least. Lee didn’t know what to expect when his mom dropped him in front of the small neat Carpenter’s cottage. Somehow he thought that a wizard or witch would live somewhere more impressive, maybe with a tower and battlements.

Cantrip herself, was a tall statuesque woman who looked in her early twenties. She had shoulder length, golden blond hair and a bright wide smile. Her breasts were — impressive to a lad like Lee. In short she looked like a stereo-typical bimbo. Lee quickly reassessed this opinion as his lessons began.

She spent the first lesson going over the theories of magic, of which there were several, and no one could apparently say one was more correct than any other. It was really more a case of which one or ones worked for you.

She told him he would be spending two hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays with her and all afternoon on Saturday. She explained that once he gained a little control, they would cut back.

She had tested Lee with a number of crystals, and seemed to be confused by the results. “This is really strange.” Cantrip said with a puzzled look on her face.

Lee looked at her quizzically.

“You seem to react most strongly to nature, healing and elemental magics, but you also show some aptitude for enchantment, and even limited capacity for illusion. I’m not sure whether your healing is a magical ability or an outgrowth of your regenerative abilities. Some regenerators are also healers,” She explained. “It’s very unusual to have abilities in so many types of magic, but as we work together I’ll try to help you develop at least the rudiments of as many as we can.”

In the next couple of sessions she tried to teach him how to manage his glamour with limited success. One problem was his glamour didn’t always seem to do the same thing. When his emotions were running high, they would broadcast to people around him, which could be a real pain. He had learned to reduce this using meditation to control the strength of his emotions somewhat, however, it didn’t completely stop the dissemination of the strong emotions he did have.

Other times his glamour caused odd phenomenon to happen around him. For example, over the previous weekend, he helped his mom plant a winter garden with mostly seeds. The next morning the seeds had sprouted and the seedlings looked like they were a week or so old.

Once at the mall, he saw a couple of older bullies from school and he remembered kinda wishing he could hide from them. Suddenly everyone seemed to be sort of unconsciously avoiding him, going widely around him and totally ignoring his presence.

Cantrip was still trying to figure his glamour out. Most fae had a glamour of some sort. They could range from making them really attractive to making them virtually invisible. Each individual fae’s glamour could be different, but it was always did the same thing for the same fae, and fae could usually quickly learn to control their glamours. Lee, however, didn’t appear to actually be a fae, and his glamour was very different. But since Lee wasn’t a fae, Cantrip wasn’t sure how to approach teaching him control.

She had first tried to train him to turn it off altogether using a technique a fae friend of hers taught her, but while he could do so for short periods, it actually made the problem worse, since the glamour seemed to build up and burst free all at once, intensifying the effect on whoever was near him. It also made his meditation less effective. She had then tried to teach him to sort of mute it, since turning it off altogether didn’t work.

By his third or fourth session, he seemed to be gaining pretty good control of his emotional broadcasts most of the time, at least, according to Coach who was more sensitive to emotions than his parents. They decided to go with that for now. Hopefully, the staff at Whateley could do more. However, as much as they tried and as much as they worked on it, he still lost control during times of high stress.

The most frustrating effect for Lee was when he wasn’t upset and was just going about his business, people often acted different toward him than they had in the past. For lack of a better description, it seemed like they sort of revered him, even when he was being cranky and hostile. Even his parents did it, which felt really strange and definitely not right. It could be downright embarrassing. Some days were worse than others.

Cantrip started taking him out into public to practice his control. One day he had looked around to find a half a dozen people following him and staring at him like he was a rock star or some other famous person. He now understood why a lot of VIPs were such recluses. One man, his father’s age, even rushed past him to open and hold the door for him. Only people who were annoyed or angry with him seemed immune.

“You realize that you may never fully get control of this,” Cantrip told him during their fifth session. “It may just be a part of who you are.”

“How the crap am I supposed to deal with this? How am I supposed to go back to school? Just how am I supposed to pass for normal when everyone acts so strange around me?”

This made Lee so frustrated that they finally had to quit for the day since he couldn’t stop disseminating his annoyance. It was starting to draw unwanted attention to them.

That evening he let his mom and dad know what Cantrip had told him. His mom said that Cantrip had already called her. “Cantrip also said you would probably be able to control it enough to live a normal life, _if_ you really work at your meditation and control exercises.”

“Yeah, until the day comes when my emotions get the better of me. I don’t want to live my whole life with my emotions so tightly controlled. What kind of a life is that? How am I ever going to have a girlfriend, if I have to be so damned controlled? Huh? Answer me that!”

He turned and ran to his room slamming the door. A few minutes later, Eve and Beth came into the living room in tears. “What’s wrong with us?” They wrapped themselves around their mother. “We both just burst into tears for no reason.

“Shhh, darlings, it’s alright. Your brother is having a hard time with his mutation and right now he can’t help making you feel like he feels, but it’ll be alright. He doesn’t mean to make us feel bad.” She stroked their hair until they stopped crying.

As she felt better, Eve looked up at her mother and said through her sniffles, “You mean Lee feels this bad, too?”

“Probably worse, baby. It’s very hard on him to adjust to his changes, and he can’t help sharing his feelings yet.”

Eve looked over at Beth, silent understanding passing between them. They kissed their mother, slid down from the couch and went toward the bedrooms.

A little later, the emotional storm abated and a feeling of peacefulness settled over the house. Kathleen assumed that Lee had cried himself to sleep again, but when she went to check on him, she felt tears of her own well up as she peeked into Lee’s room. There on his bed were the three of them. One of the girls on either side of him, their arms wrapped protectively around him, as they slept. Their tear-stained faces peaceful and calm. She motioned for Tom to come to her. They hugged each other silently, proud smiles on their faces as they felt the love that had calmed the tempest in Lee’s soul.

**************

By the sixth lesson Cantrip decided to begin teaching him to gather essence and a few simple spells, mostly to get him used to manipulating essence. She thought, if he learned how to sense and manipulate essence, he might be able to apply those techniques to control his glamour.

Cantrip said the simple spells he’d learned were called cantrips and were a type of magic she specialized in, hence her codename. She explained that while the spells weren’t very powerful and didn’t take a lot of essence, they could be extremely useful.

One spell was particularly handy. It allowed him to dry himself or anything else very quickly. A few muttered words and gestures to concentrate the essence around him and whatever object he cast it on seemed to shed the water like a new teflon skillet.

After he showed it off to his family, his sisters were insisting that he dry their hair after they took their showers in the morning. With practice he found he could actually gather the water into a globe and toss it away. A variation on the spell let Lee condense water from the air. He would never need to carry a water bottle again, he thought with a grin. Other cantrips let him hide easily, create powerful odors, both pleasant and unpleasant, and finally to light a candle with a word and flicking his fingers like he was striking a lighter. Cantrip told him that later he would be able to do these without the words and finger motions. They were really just mnemonic devises to help him focus his power.

Another spell created an orb of light that illuminated about a 10 foot area, with a little practice he discovered on his own that he could cast this spell then throw the orb to light up things further away from him. A further spell would freeze what it was cast on, provided it was fairly small. About a quart of water seemed to be about his limits, at least for now. Lee discovered small variations on this spell would boil a similar amount of water, or melt much smaller quantities metal or stone.

One spell that his mother and sisters really liked was a spell that would clean things like his clothes without water even removing stains. They were coming to him every day or two to clean clothes that they would have taken to the dry cleaners.

Lee grumbled that they were taking advantage of him, but secretly he liked doing this for his sisters and mother. He realized just how much he loved and needed them, especially now.

While Lee could gather essence much more rapidly than most beginning magic users, there seemed to be quite definite limits on the amount of essence he could hold and manipulate at any one time. Cantrip seemed confused by this, since her crystals were showing Lee to be a strong or even very strong wizard, he should be able to control much more essence.

Lee was surprised when Cantrip said she was astonished at how quickly Lee was picking up these simple spells and how easily he seemed to gather magical essence. “You know it took me months to learn to collect enough essence to be useful even for these simple cantrips, and it usually took me a week or more to learn each of these spells that you are picking up in a single 1-hour session. I didn’t learn how to modify these spells like you are doing until the end of my sophomore year at Whateley. The only thing holding you back from learning much more is the odd limits you seem to have on how much essence you can control.”

While he had been very excited to be actually learning magic, he had noticed some disturbing changes in himself after a long session of learning or practicing these spells. The first thing he had noticed after his second practice session was his muscles didn’t seem to be as toned or large as they had been. He put that down to the fact that he wasn’t practicing with the team anymore and resolved to exercise more, so he didn’t lose all the muscles he was so proud of. He moreover noticed that after every couple of sessions with Cantrip that he seemed to need a haircut and his dirty blond hair seemed to be getting darker.

When he asked her about these things, she said that some physical changes often seemed to be triggered by starting to channel magical energies. Lee, however, wasn’t sure she was being totally honest with him. He tried to ask Coach about it, but he just replied that he really didn’t know much about magic, and if that was what Cantrip said then Lee should probably just accept that as the price of learning magic.

After his sixth session with her, she surprised him. “Lee, I should very much like you to have this.” It was an expensive looking tome bound in rich dark reddish brown leather. She cast a spell as she handed it to him. When he touched the book, there was a small tingle in his fingers and he understood that she had magically passed ownership of the book to him.

He was touched by the gift since he knew this had been her first spell book. She also gave him another leather bound volume that when he open it, he found the pages were blank. “This is your own spell book or grimoire to record spells as you master them. You need to keep it safe and secret, because if your enemies get their hands on it, they can use that knowledge against you. I want you to have at least started it when you come back for your next lesson. Now here is an easy spell that will help you keep your grimoire hidden. It makes most people’s eyes slide right across anything it’s cast on.” She demonstrated the spell. It took Lee about only a half an hour of effort to be able to reliably cast the spell.

“Now cast it on your grimoire. You will have to renew the spell after every time you open it. Later, I will teach you a spell that will bind the book to you, so that no one else will be able open it, but that’s a little advanced for you right now.”

Lee thanked her profusely. He was more excited to receive these two books than when he’d bought his first Xbox after saving a year for it.

She had recently tried to teach him a more ambitious spell that summoned a type of spell armor for his protection. Even though he was doing it correctly, she confirmed; he was unable to complete the spell. He would start and the essence would begin congealing around him, then suddenly it would dissipate.

“I just don’t really understand why you can’t seem to gather more essence.” She said after another frustrating attempt during which she was monitoring him with her crystals. “The crystals show that you ought to be able to muster and control much more essence. While the essence you gather is collected phenomenally quickly for someone just starting out, there seems to be something limiting how much you can assemble and control, at one time. It should be enough, however, for these next spells I’m going to try to teach you.”

During his most recent lesson she taught him a couple of stronger spells.

“This is a shield spell. It isn’t the most powerful shield spell out there, but it is fairly easy and quick to cast, and you should be able to gather enough essence to cast it, although it is at about the upper limit of your current abilities. It will stop minor spell attacks, physical attacks or physical objects like something thrown at you. It isn’t strong enough to stop a major spell or a bullet, but it’s still pretty useful. Best of all, you can cast it and it will continue to protect you until it is hit with something or you run out of essence to power it.” she said.

The other was a small fireball spell. As a D&D and gaming aficionado, Lee was wild about learning these spells. The fireball was small and only had a range of about 50 feet, but it kind of exploded on impact and would scorch or char whatever it hit. Cantrip looked at him very seriously and said, “You must promise that you will only use it responsibly such as for self defense. You could seriously injure someone who has no defense.”

She made him promise on his name, something which he could feel bound him in some indescribable way. It was a really weird feeling, to feel mentally and physically bound by his words.

She told him, “The shield spell and the fireball spell are more than cantrips, they are your first spells of power. I think that as you practice and develop, you will be able to gather more essence, then we will learn other more powerful spells. In the meanwhile, we can concentrate on cantrips and simple spells to teach you control of your power. Many of the lesser spells can not only be very useful, but are quick and easy to cast. They are good when you are in a bind.”

“How can these cantrips get me out of trouble?” Lee asked a little disdainfully.

“Well, your water spell can be thrown in someone’s face as a distraction, or it can put out a fire, and powerful odors adequately protect skunks, just to give you a few examples.”

Lee left in doubt about the usefulness of the cantrips in a pinch, but he was excited about his power spells.

************

Lee had gone deep into the woods behind his subdivision the next day and practiced these spells, especially casting the fireball repeatedly until he felt exhausted. After about two hours of trying he had hit one medium sized oak tree in the same spot with a half dozen fireballs until it was burned almost a third of the way through the trunk. He hated having to wait between castings to gather more essence. He didn’t realize that the total amount of essence he used was greater than many wizards could collect in a month, and he had done it without thinking, only requiring a few minutes for collecting.

When he got home, he was feeling pretty self-satisfied until he went to the bathroom and was shocked when he looked in the mirror. His hair was at least two inches longer than the buzz cut he usually kept it in. His hair was also thick, curly, and seemed to be browner than usual. ‘What the frell is going on?’ he thought. As he looked in the mirror, he began to notice other small changes. His chin looked - odd, was the only word he could think of, somehow less square and his nose looked like it might be a little smaller. His skin looked softer, as well.

All this was getting too strange. He wasn’t sure he wanted to learn magic badly enough to undergo these kind of changes.

He then also noticed that things looked at little lower than they were yesterday. Was he growing finally? He backed up to the door where he and his parents had marked his height since he was old enough to stand and using a pencil on his head made a new mark. The good news was he’d grown an inch and a half since all this had started. He was so glad to finally be growing, he didn’t stop to question why.

While he stood there staring at his face, he suddenly screamed and doubled over as he was hit with a powerful cramp in his lower abdomen. He had been queasy for several days, but this was the worst yet. He hoped he wasn’t catching a bug.

The cramps passed after a few minutes.

***************

September 20th
John Paul Jones High School

Starting back to school had been weird to say the least. Not only was he not on the team, but there were all sorts of rumors going around.

Everyone wanted to know where he’d been. Why hadn’t he started school three weeks ago with the rest of them?

He had been forced to tell the story at least a dozen times. The fact that he looked slightly different didn’t help. His hair although freshly cut was much darker, and his body was a little more slender. Even someone who knew him would have to think about it to identify the differences other than his hair, but since he was noticeably taller, most people didn’t make too much of it.

He was grateful for the colored contacts his mother had got him, as his eyes, instead of being hazel, were now green. Thankfully, the colored contacts covered that. He hated the way they felt, but he wore them anyway, and was glad to have them.

It was also weird not being on the team. His teammates tried to make small talk with him when he ran into them, but they acted a little uncomfortable around him. He still was hanging out with them at lunch, but he wasn’t sure how long that would last.

Worst of all, he was still being hit unpredictably with abdominal twinges and sometimes outright cramping. He couldn’t figure out what was going on. His mother had scheduled him a doctor’s appointment, right after his next torture session with Doc Widget.

A number of people acted like he had some kind of contagion, people he thought were friends. Even Amanda, his sort of girlfriend, acted a little spooked around him. They had gone out a couple of times to a movie or for a pizza before all this had started and he thought that she liked him, but apparently Fred Neas’ mutant story was getting more attention than Lee wanted and even had some traction with her. She wasn’t outright snubbing him though, so he thought maybe it would pass.

He was walking down the hall, lost in his thoughts, when he bumped into Randy Jenkins. Randy’s dad was a member of the local H-1 group and a deacon at that so-called church - the Pentecostal Church of Genetic Purity. They only had a small congregation but were very vocal.

“Hey, watch where you’re going,” Randy snarled, as he realized who bumped into him. “I hear you’re some kind of mutie, Cook. That right?” He sneered and shoved Lee. Randy was a senior, big as the side of a house, and well-known as a bully. The shove knocked Lee back against the lockers with a loud metallic clang. “You know we don’t allow no mutie scum ‘round here!”

“I’m not a mutant!” Lee lied. Being on the football team, Lee had never had to worry about the ubiquitous school bullies. Even though he was kind of small, the prestige of being on the team in middle school gave him a sort of immunity, plus before he could have counted on his teammates to back him up. He wasn’t so sure now.

“That’s not what I hear,” Randy shoved him again. “I hear you manifested on the field a few weeks ago.”

“No! No. — Look, I took a stupid devisor drug I shouldn’t have, and it made it look like I’d manifested.”

“Yeah, right! I think you’re just another gene scum that needs to be run out this school and this town.” He said shoving Lee again, harder. It took all of Lee’s self control not to use his new strength to toss this bastard down the hall, but that would just confirm his suspicions and cause more trouble. Besides, he knew any bruises quickly heal.

“Randy, what are you doing, you piece of dog crap!” Jim shouted. He had come up behind Randy and had him by the collar of his shirt. Randy was big but it was mostly flab, whereas Jim was all muscle. He slung Randy away from Lee.

Randy turned, ready to punch whoever dared lay a hand on him until he saw it was Jim. A crowd had gathered in the hall around them. Randy stood with his fists bunched for a minute, then seeing not only Jim, but Chuck and a couple of other guys from the team pushing through the crowd, backed down. He turned back towards Lee and growled, “This ain’t over, scum. I’ll have a little talk with my dad about you!” He pushed through the crowd and strode down the hall. People dodging to either side of him like water shed before the prow of a destroyer.

“Don’t let him bother you,” Jim said. Chuck came up behind him nodding. Even the other guys on the team were nodding. Maybe he still had more friends than he had been afraid he did.

Lee nodded, then shrugged. This still isn’t good. Life is going to hell. Sooner or later the truth is gonna come out, and I’m dead, he thought. He nodded back to Jim and went off toward his class without saying anything more, but he was filled with dread.

Lee was so frustrated, he skipped his next class and went to the coach’s office. He was unwilling to face anyone else now, lest his hard-won restraint give way publicly, either showing his strength by throwing some a-hole like Randy across a room or by loosing control of his glamour. Couch listened patiently, saying the right things until Lee exhausted his pique. Lee reluctantly left the modest safety and peace of Coach’s office to go to his next class.

**************

The next month went by with more of the same, except that most people moved on to new rumors about different people. Jim stuck close to Lee, so Randy and his sycophants only had limited chances to give him a really hard time. Chuck stuck close for a few days but Lee could feel him gradually drawing away, now that they didn’t have the football team in common. He still came over to Lee’s house with Jim occasionally to play GEO or some other video game, but it didn’t feel right.

It made Lee sad. Chuck, Jim and Lee had been friends since the first grade. Now it seemed like Chuck, at least, was slipping away, and while the rest of the team were still friendly with him, it wasn’t the same. He was an outsider now, looking in.

There had been some incidents around home, too. Their house had been spray painted with mutant epitaphs twice, and his dad’s car had been paint ballooned once as he drove down the street from behind some bushes.

He had helped his dad put up motion-activated lights and security cameras all around the house last weekend. They had also placed proximity sensors about twenty-five feet from the house to give some early warning. So much for the coach’s opinion of Knoxville being less hostile to mutants, and this was solely on the basis of one or two loud-mouth kids’ accusations to their bigoted parents. Lee’s father had been verbally abused at an H-1 meeting even without any public evidence that Lee was a mutant.

Lee and his parents knew that it would get much worse once he could no longer hide his changes. They had even discussed the possibility of moving. Eve and Beth were devastated by the possibility that they might have to move. Both were in tears every time the subject came up, but as much as they didn’t want to move they also wanted Lee to be safe. It was a no win situation.

October 12th, 2008
Doc Widget’s workshop

Lee glanced at the expressions on Doc’s and Coach’s faces, “So, what’s the verdict. Am I going to grow two heads and a tail?” He half joked to cover his nervousness. He was leaning on a strange looking machine, taller than he was with dozens of gauges and digital readouts. A massive laser focused through a thick mica window on a dark chamber. Lee looked at it and asked, “What does this monstrosity do?”

Doc replied, “That’s my coffee maker.”

Lee laughed, thinking Doc was pulling his leg until Coach pressed a small key pad and slid a cup into a recess. Moments later the laser charged loudly, fired and then the smell of fresh coffee filled the lab. Lee stood dumbfounded.

Coach sipped on the coffee as he gathered his wits to break the news to Lee, finally giving a lopsided grin, and replying to Lee’s earlier question, “You may consider it as such, but no, it’s not GSD.” He paused, “Lee, there’s no easy way to say this - it looks like your BIT is female.”

“Huh! That’s nuts!”

“It’s not as crazy as it seems,” Doc said. “It happens.”

“What do you mean my BIT is female?” Lee was confused and a little scared. “How can that be — I’m a guy?”

Doc took up the explaining. “Lee, as I said, your BIT is the blueprint for improvements your mutation is going to make to your body, and according to my devises, your BIT is going to reshape you as female. Probably a very beautiful female, as you are a high level exemplar, but female none the less.”

Lee looked at first one then the other as he waited for the coach or the Doc to yell ‘Gotcha”, but they didn’t. “What do you mean it’s going to reshape me as female? For how long, and how exactly is that an improvement!?”

The men looked at each other, sympathy in their eyes. “Lee, you are probably going to be a girl for the rest of your life. I know that this isn’t easy, but I’m not going lie to you.” the coach said sympathetically.

“_But I’m a guy fer Christ’s sake!_” he screeched at them. “Run the frelling tests again, you must have made a mistake! _I can’t be a girl! — I’m a guy!_”

“Calm down, Lee”, Doc said in a calm, quiet tone of voice that he hoped would get through to him. “You’re not going to wake up tomorrow as a girl. But you’re probably will change in that direction slowly - over months at least, if not years. You probably should have a long while to get used to the idea before anyone else will even notice.”

“I’ll notice! _You’ve got to do something!_ Lee’s voice was rising both in volume and pitch. “I don’t want to be a girl. I DON’T KNOW HOW TO BE A GIRL! Please, Coach - Doc, do something.” He pleaded with them.

Tears were now running down his face, but his voice fell to a near whisper. “I don’t care if I can’t be on the team. I don’t even care if I’m a mutant, but” and his voice rose again, “I. cannot. be. a. girl!” The word ‘cannot’ echoed around the room.

Coach spoke. “Lee, no one has ever been able to change someone’s BIT, and believe me when I say that many have tried. They’ve tried devises, magic, science and probably some things, we’ve never heard of. No one has succeeded. If they had, there wouldn’t be any mutants with GSD. Most of the attempts have only made things worse for the mutant, and more than a few have died.”

“I. Don’t. Care. You have to do _something_ to change it! Put me in one of these machines AND CHANGE MY BIT TO BE A GUY!”, he screamed. “I can’t be a girl! I’d rather die first!” Lee’s eyes were wide and his face was turning red. A strange greenish glow had begun to surround him.

A small orchid sitting under a grow lamp behind Lee began to grow as the glow touched it. Within seconds, it went from a small seedling to a full sized plant, complete with small blossom buds. They all jumped as the clay pot burst from the pressure of the growing roots.

Lee leaped up, ready to run. He was hysterical, close to losing it completely, and the coach knew it. He had even expected it, nodding at Dr. Widget who had eased around behind Lee. Before Lee could react, the doc stuck a transdermal injector, that looked like it came off of a Star Trek set, against his neck and there came a quick hiss. Lee spun and looked at him, balefully, just before he slumped in the coach’s arms and the room went dark.

***************

He was having the strangest dream. He was walking through a verdant tree-filled valley, full of rocks covered in soft green mosses, and flowers dotted the landscape. Streams, ranging from small trickles to rills of water fell down the steep ravine wall every few feet, all feeding a small brook running down the center of the gorge. The water dripped, tinkled and burbled musically. Birds sang in the trees, and rabbits and squirrels gamboled on the forest floor seemingly oblivious of him. A warm spring-like breeze sighed through the trees. It was the most beautiful and peaceful place he had ever seen. He knew he had been upset, but no one could be upset here. It just simply wasn’t possible.

He bent over one of the small rills and stuck in his hand. The water was cool on his fingers. Cupping his hand he brought a little to his mouth. It was the best water he had ever tasted, refreshing him and quenching a thirst he hadn’t known he had.

A call, he felt more than heard, tugged at his heart from further down the valley. He turned and started in that direction, dropping his wet hand to his side. If he had looked, he would have seen the drops of water from his hand hitting the mossy rocks where diminutive plants unfurled, rapidly growing from where each the drops struck. They quickly opened tiny, exquisite golden star-shaped blossoms behind him fill the air with their perfume.

The gorge widened into a broad shallow valley. He soon came upon a clearing containing a ring of standing stones that reminded him vaguely of pictures of Stonehenge he had seen, but different too. For one thing, it wasn’t a ruin. He walked up and stepped between the polished stones to see a very tall, beautiful woman standing in the center.

She was breathtaking. Standing at least 6 feet tall with a slender statuesque figure reminiscent of marble sculptures. Her rich silky dark brown hair, woven with small flowers, fell in waves down her back reaching well below her waist. It also poured over the front of her shoulders spilling across her moderate sized breasts. She wore no clothing, but surprisingly he was not embarrassed. It looked completely natural, as if she should be no other way.

She had large, gently pointed ears set a little higher and further back than normal yet they looked perfectly natural on her. Her face was regal with large green eyes, ones the he felt like he could fall into and never come out. Her bearing was both enticing and royal. If he had seen a girl that looked one tenth as good as this woman, in school, he would not dream of approaching her. She reminded him of the pictures in his history textbook of statues of greek goddesses, haunting and elusive.

While sensing a great power radiating from the woman, she was not fearsome or scary to him. In fact, she seemed to radiate calm gentleness. He knew instinctively that he was only seeing one aspect of this incredible creature. He knew that she could also be more frightening than anything he had ever imagined. He fell to his knees before her, looking up adoringly.

As he gazed up at her, it appeared as if she was simultaneously a teenage girl and a woman in the full power of her womanhood. Yeah, she was definitely much, much more than she seemed.

She looked at him and smiled. He felt a peace sweep over him like his soul would never be troubled again. He returned the smile.

“Are you an elf,” he asked timidly?

She laughed like the tinkling of bells. “No, Lee, my child. My children’s children’s children begat the Aos Sidhe, but I am not an elf,” she said with amusement. “Rise, my child, you need never give obeisance before me.” She stretched forth a long slender hand to him. Without a word, he took it and stood.

He waited silently for her to speak again. She gazed piercingly at him, then sighed with wistfulness. Her eyes and face became distant as if she were looking at something millions of miles and millions of years away. Abruptly, her face snapped back into focus in the here and now. She stared at him looking slightly wistful or maybe a little sad.

“Ahh, so the time foretold has come to be. The cycle begins anew.” she said in her musical voice. He knew the language she spoke wasn’t English, yet he understood her words clearly. Birds flew down to land on her shoulders as she spoke, their own voices silent in her presence. She sat regally upon one of the large stones. Three large wolves emerged from between the stones and sat on the ground at her feet followed by an enormous white tiger which leapt lightly onto the stone on which she sat. It laid its massive head in her lap. As she ran her fingers though it’s fur, it began to purr as loud as a well tuned Harley. He knew neither he nor she had anything to fear from these creatures. Rabbits and squirrels frolicked with other small creatures, some that he had heard of, but never seen before. All were at her feet, also fearless of the predators.

“Where am I?” he asked in the same language. He marveled that he could understand and speak the language. “And how do you know my name?”

“You are nowhere and everywhere, you walk in a dream world beyond the bounds of space and time, both in the world and beside it. Indeed those concepts have no meaning here.” Lee felt like he could listen to anything she wanted to say forever, just to hear her voice and be near her. “Long, long ago, some called this place Avalon, others called it Eden. It is also the gateway to tír na nÓg. It is a small fragment of the land where Atlantis once held sway, before the breaking of that land and nearly the world.”

She stared at him intently, as if judging him. He couldn’t speak for fear of bursting the dream that surrounded him.

Finally, she spoke. “It has been long indeed since one of my children has been brought into the world, but how could I not know my child’s name?” she replied, slightly sadly.

“I don’t understand. My mother’s Kathleen Cook.” he said bewildered.

“She bore you, but as surely as she is your mother, so am I. I am your true mother, through your mother’s people and your father’s, out of the Emerald Isle. This mutation, as your people call it, but awakens my seed that dwells within you, the true You! Or more exactly what you are becoming, which now stirs.”

“And what is that?” he asked curiously. The sound of her voice drove all other emotions from him except for a need to listen and adore her.

“You are become ‘Tuath dé Danu’”. ———— “Welcome, my child!” As the words resonated with power in his head, she and the scene around him began fading. “Wait! Who are you?” he shouted as she and everything around him became transparent.

“We will speak again soon,” was the last thing he heard her say before blackness took him once again.

**************