Synopsis: No rest for the wicked, or for anyone being chased by the wicked. At a time when the last thing she needs is a fight, well she gets one anyways. But her fighting spirit is the last thing that anyone was expecting.
 

Accidental Magic
Chapter Twenty-One: Dancing Puppets
 
By Allystra Krane
edited by Sephrena Miller

---

 
Terri had curled herself up into fetal position on the bench with Kristi and Tasha taking up positions on either side.

Maxine, Chelsea and Stephanie just looked on as someone they barely knew just broke down again for the second time before noon.

Terri was pulling her legs up against herself, the coolness of the early fall day finally getting to her.

"It's going to be okay," Kristi said. "There has got to be an explanation for this."

"Yeah, Grandma is jerking me around again," Terri said with a sneer.

"Even if it's crazy, I am sure it has to be reasonable," Kristi added. "There is no need to cry."

"Speak for yourself," Terri said. "I think I deserve this cry. If I have to be stuck as a girl, then I'm allowed."

"C’mon, you are just being silly," Tasha said. "Didn't you just say a few minutes ago that you wanted to be female by choice?"

"You don't understand!" Terri snapped back, burying her head in between her knees.

"I don't get it," Tasha said. "You did say that you were..."

"Only because it was my choice to make!" Terri stuttered out from between her knees.

Kristi gave Tasha a stern look as if to say "You're not helping." before turning her attention back to the shivering mass in her arms.

"By your reaction," Kristi said with a soft voice, "you must have been stuck for awhile once before."

Terri nodded but there was a long silence while she composed herself but Kristi wouldn't let go.

"I thought I had done it to myself," Terri squeaked out. "Grandma had set up this scroll with a spell and I found it the Friday night before last. I had no idea that the spell made everyone at school think I'd always been a female so I spent the whole weekend in a panic attack."

"How did you change back?" Maxine asked.

"Despite being promised by one of my classmates who is also a witch," Terri replied, indignation replacing her disparaging tone. "I didn't find the right spell until Tuesday night."

Kristi nodded. "I understand now. You were terrified and no one could help you. Those five days must have gone by so slowly."

Terri nodded again. "Allyssa did give me a... magic suit on Tuesday that was affecting me as I wore it."

"Making you feel better?"

"Yeah, but it fell off me last night when I lost the ability to change back. It won't speak to me anymore."

"Are you sure you lost the ability last night?" Maxine asked. "I mean, when was the last time you were male?"

Terri wiped tears from her eyes, thought about it for a moment before blushing slightly. "I think it was Saturday."

"So you just have to tell yourself that you are choosing to remain female until such time that you regain the ability to change back," Kristi said with confidence. "Just be optimistic about it, alright?"

Terri took several deep breaths then nodded slowly. She uncoiled herself from her fetal pose, mentally trying to tell herself that she could deal with it.

She was helped to her feet by a joint effort by Tasha and Kristi, and then Terri spoke up.

"I've been relying on my suit too much. I realized last Friday that it was helping me, but I never realized how much until now."

"It's okay, you're entitled to a bit of a freak out," Tasha said. "Now, are you coming with us to the mall?"

"I suppose," Terri said slowly, not really wanting to go but not wanting to upset her new friends.

She was just about to follow them when a spear of ice drove itself fast into left arm. The force of the blow knocked her backward and over the bench, leaving the rest of the girls stunned.

"GET OUT OF MY WAY... BITCHES!" screamed an angry man's voice behind them.

Behind the bench, Terri was struggling to lift herself off the ground. The throbbing from her wound was flooding her pain centers and her eyes were already swimming. She couldn't just ignore it.

She got back into a sitting position on the grass, and then pressed her right hand against the spot on her bicep where she had been hit, to find a solid hunk of ice protruding several inches from her skin.

She knew that removing it would likely cause her to start bleeding uncontrollably, but she could feel a darkness already creeping into the back of her thoughts.

Meanwhile, Maxine had grabbed Stephanie and Chelsea while Kristi had Tasha's hand and they were bolting in opposite directions as fast as they could run.

"WHAT THE HELL?" Tasha screamed.

"Terri said some bad people were after her," Kristi responded. "I guess they finally caught up."

Kristi veered off toward a particular grove of bushes. Tasha was barely keeping up: her feet caught in a permanent stumble when they breezed through the first line of shrubbery and she tripped over a leg lying on the ground and pitched face first onto another person.

She picked herself up, to find she was now straddling Kristi in a compromising position. Kristi's eyes were shut and she wasn't moving.

Two pair of hands dragged her off Kristi's still body. She turned to view the owners of the hands, only to find she was looking at an older woman and another Kristi.
 

~*~
 
Terri was losing the struggle to keep from blacking out. The inky blackness in the edges peripheral vision was creeping up and distorting the image before her.

She could hear him talking loudly as he approached the other side of the bench, but she couldn't make out a word as she was now fighting a battle with a part of her own mind. A battle that she could sense she was quickly losing.
 

~*~
 
As Victor, one of Nethizar's chosen, approached the bench, intent on hearing a sobbing little girl behind it, he was surprised as she tore through the wood of the bench as if it had been made of paper and ran straight at him, her eyes ablaze with fire and her hand clutching the icy spear she had yanked from her own arm.

He never had time to yell as she drove it through his ribs and into his left lung with a wet crunching noise.

She didn't stop moving, choosing to tear out his throat with her left hand as she passed him.

Before Victor hit the ground, he was already dead and Terri was quickly running down the next cultist who decided to challenge her.

Terri was charging with gusto, showing no fear or remorse as four balls of energy narrowly missed her. She was dodging magic attacks that were blowing six-foot craters in the grass behind her but she closed in on the woman and suddenly charged her own blast in her right hand.

She struck the woman in the solar plexus with a clawed left hand. It appeared as though she had formed her fingers into short jagged blades and they drew blood, but it was the glowing red ball that Terri released directly into the woman's face that ended it.

Almost instantly a headless corpse slumped to the ground and Terri stood a moment, catching her breath, only to be struck from behind by someone else's magic.

Lightning arced about her frame as she screamed in an almost feral way, before dropping to her knees.

The flare in Terri's eyes relit after only a moment and her clawed hand drove itself into the soil beside her. The sudden rift she created in the ground began splitting and lifting the earth unevenly, tearing a jagged, twisted, crack in the earth that ran under the legs of the woman who attacked her.

Terri tore her hand out of the dirt and as she did, a spike of rock erupted from the ground, throwing the woman into the air.

She didn't return to the earth gently, as Terri had somehow crossed the distance and slammed the woman's head into the dirt with enough force to leave a hole with a human stuck in it like an ostrich.

The earth shuddered under the impact, stunning the dozen or so cultist members running up to join in.

She was nightmare clothed in substance, her arm dripping with the blood of their comrades. She had little showed no satisfaction in her deeds, but no sympathy either.

Several turned around, realizing that Terri's unsettling gaze was upon them, but it was already too late.

Terri reached the closest man in only seconds, grabbed him and dropped him into an unconscious pile as a blue mist appeared to emanate from him and flowed into her.

Terri stood over his prone form when she was struck in the chest with bullets. Again and again her shirt burst like bubbles breaking the water's surface. She staggered backward from the force of each round as it slammed into and through her. One final shot pierced her right eye before blowing a hole out the back of her head.

"Stop!" screamed out Nethizar as he grabbed the gun from the hand of his follower and used the handle to pistol whip the woman. "What were you thinking? She is of no use to us dead!"

Terri had fallen to her knees once again and wobbled briefly before falling forward on her face.

"She was unstoppable!" the scorned woman screamed back as she held her jaw. "You couldn't take her over, no matter what we did. She took everything we threw at her and still managed to rip them apart."

"I never gave any of you the order to attack," Nethizar said before he spat on her shirt. "If you had all attacked together, or focused your assault with teamwork, you could have drained her shield and kept her from fighting back, and then she would have been ours."

"Well," the woman said as she faced the old man. "Well, she's dead now. I was trying to save...."

She was cut off as Terri had picked herself off the ground and gotten even angrier while they were distracted with each other, crossed the distance to them, then slammed her hand through the woman's ribcage and crushed her heart in her palm.

Nethizar was taken back. He was slowly backing away from this inhuman creature before him. He was staring into Terri's face, the grass of the park behind her visible through the hole in her right eye socket.

"Now I understand," Nethizar said as he teleported away, just inches ahead of a wild swipe.

Kristi came strolling up, dragging an unconscious man behind her with all the effort of dragging a sack of potatoes.

Lost was her skirt, replaced by leggings and she was holding a wooden pole in her other hand.

"Whoa," Kristi remarked. "You really got hit good there. But while you distracted the stronger ones, I managed to take out about a dozen before they teleported out."

Terri stared at her through one glowing eye, snarled and lunged at Kristi.

Realizing she was in trouble, Kristi began using her polearm to defend and keep Terri out of arms reach.

Terri was only on the offensive and Kristi used the openings the feral girl left to score hits against the right side of her head.

Terri's face was cracking like hardened clay, each blow extending the rifts across her forehead and cheek. She was unaffected by this, her only concern seemed to be causing harm to Kristi.

The polearm started to show the signs of wear, as Terri's claws left large gashes along its length. Even with all the attacking, Kristi continued to keep Terri at bay.

Hands lit up and fire entered the equation, forcing Kristi to employ new strategy to avoid being burned, but, after only a few seconds, Terri's flaming hand appeared to crumble and break off.

Kristi hopped backward as Terri now looked at the hollow tube that was what remained of her arm. The glow in her remaining eye went out and the right side of her face completely crumbled away leaving a partially-intact living shell of a human being.

There were tears forming in her eye as she crumpled to the ground. She was still trying to look up and see Kristi.

"I'm sorry," Terri mumbled as best she could with half her face missing. "I didn't mean to hit you."

Kristi dropped her pole and took the girl's outstretched hand. "Don't worry," she said. "This is just a clay golem copy, just like you. Your grandmother worried that I might be in danger, same as you."

Kristi pointed toward the edge of a strand of trees where Terri could see herself, Kristi, Cathryn, and Tasha approaching.

The golem Terri started to laugh and cry at the same time while trying to get up off the ground, prompting the golem Kristi to take the broken girl into her arms.

"Your suffering is over sweety," golem Kristi said as the real Kristi charged a ball of blue magic in her hand as they approached. "You did your job really well and I'm sorry we had to deceive you."

The ball was let fly and the two golems were frozen in their embrace, icy cold engulfing and hardening their bodies while frost formed across their surfaces.

From their side, it almost looked like a white plaster statue.

Cathryn spoke a violent-sounding verse and the golems both shattered into tiny pieces.

"Why did you do that?" exclaimed the real Terri, still clad in her symbiote suit.

"She was in pain," Cathryn said. "That was part of the construction. It wouldn't have believed it was you if it didn't have feeling from the skin. So she took the bullets and everything for you."

Tasha looked back and forth between the other people standing there before blurting out, “I still don't get what's going on!"

"Where are the rest of the girls?" Cathryn asked.

"I think they are hiding out in the bathrooms," Terri said with a small grin. "Over there."

"I'll go get them," Kristi said. "They'll need to hear this."

"Indeed," Said Cathryn.
 

~*~
 
A few minutes later, Cathryn was standing over four very confused, scared and jittery girls who had just had their world turned on edge.

Kristi and Terri were sitting across from them, and giving the girls a few seconds to calm down.

"Who were those people, how could they throw fireballs and why don't you have a hole in your arm?" Chelsea exclaimed.

"It's a long story," Terri replied.

"Better get telling," Tasha said. "I saw most of it and I still don't understand it."

"Okay," Terri said with a sigh. "The last time I saw all of you directly, was last night. After you went to bed, Kristi and her Aunt Cathryn put a magical puppet in my place, called a golem."

"You're in on this?" Tasha exclaimed.

"I've been a user all my life," Kristi said. "I just never had a reason to tell you. None of you show the proper affinity for magic like I do. But I wasn’t aware of what was going on until we met her."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Maxine asked.

"I knew she was a user from the moment I met her, because we have a connection."

"And what connection is that?"

"Terri had that magic suit, remember?"

"Yeah, the one lying on the hotel floor, what about it?"

"First off," Kristi said with a smile, "It isn't really lying on the floor in our room. She is actually wearing it, but the golem couldn't, so we had to fake it."

"And the other reason?" Tasha asked.

"I wear a magic suit too," Kristi said. "And my suit recognized hers, because mine was its parent."

Terri turned to stare at Kristi, "You mean?"

Kristi smiled and gave Terri a hug. "Yes, I carried the infant suit that you now wear... in my womb."

The girls on the other side of the table were as shocked as Terri.

"Your suit was originally supposed to go to Allyssa," Kristi said, "but she called me that night asking if hers was ready and that she knew someone else who needed it worse than she did."

"When I met you, my suit told me who you were. When your golem started in with the anxiety attacks, I knew what Allyssa meant when she said you needed it more than her."

Terri was blushing heavily. She had no idea who had given her the suit and the new information was embarrassing her.

"So, you were controlling a magic golem..." Chelsea asked.

"Actually the golem was controlling itself," Cathryn said. "I copied Terri's mind into a control stone and put it into the golem and let it control itself."

"Our magic suits have emotional properties as well," Kristi said. "Terri's suit has been gently helping her. Between all the craziness in her life and her new female hormones, she is having some trouble adjusting. The golem didn't have that help and that is why we kept dealing with it breaking down."

Terri only blushed further. "I'm not really that bad, am I?" she gushed.

"Worse I'm afraid." Kristi said with a smile. "But we're here for you."

"Why are you telling us all this?" Tasha asked, getting anxious herself. "Doesn't us knowing pose a risk to you? How do you know we won't tell anyone else?"

At that point Augustine and three men that Terri didn't recognize stepped in from the side of her field of view.

"It's because it doesn't matter if they told you," Augustine said with a hint of irritation. "They just needed to keep you here until we got here."

"Sorry gang, but it's better this way," Kristi said with sigh.

Terri watched as the girls on the other side of the table and the rest of the girls just calmly closed their eyes and slumped into relaxed sleep.
 

~*~
 
"So," Kristi asked. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm doing pretty good," answered Terri as she lay still on her bed back in the hotel.

"Liar," Kristi said. "Your golem betrayed you. She wasn't doing so good."

"I saw those people trying to kill me," Terri said. "I'm scared, okay? I don't want to die, but I thought Grandma had a plan to keep me alive."

I'm sure she does," Kristi replied from the other bed. "Your Grandmother is legendary. She touched lives all over the world, but always made it seem like a chance meeting."

"Like the herb dealer in Bombay," Terri said with a pause.

"You met Saieem?"

"Yeah," Terri said.

"How did you meet him?"

"Grandma was starting up with the teleporting around the planet where your aunt left off, but in the process I nearly broke my ankles. I landed in Saieem's shop and he fixed them up."

"Did he tell you?"

"That Grandma saved his wife and child and that he had a debt to pay that justified helping me. Do you think?"

"Damn, she was good."

"I wonder if I am fated to meet anyone else who owes her a debt?"

"Probably," Kristi said. "Now I have another question for you. Where did you learn to fight like that? You were pumping mana practically through your veins. You could run like a cheetah, hit like a bear..."

"I can't do any of that," Terri interrupted. "Maybe Cathryn programmed it into the golem."

"She couldn't have done that, not when she copied your mind into it. The golem wouldn't have functioned with dual imprints."

"Then I have no idea," Terri said. "Since my change, every time I get into a fighting situation, I black out and when I come back, I've kicked a whole lot of ass."

"She did it too," Kristi said. "So somewhere inside your head is another personality with a real wicked violent streak."

"I hope I never meet him," Terri said.

"Me either," Kristi added. "So, should we wake up the sleepyheads now?

"Yeah, Terri answered as she sat up. "I hope they are getting the cleanup done. Man, that park was totaled."

"Totally," Kristi said with a smile.

---

Nethizar returned to the office of the abandoned warehouse he had converted into a sleeping quarters. He had given up his hideout in favor of a building more suited to holding meetings of his new army.

As he opened the door to the darkened room, a voice came from the shadow in the corner.

"So," said the voice, "how'd it go?"

"You already know the answer to that," he replied with a sneer.

There was no response.

"How come you didn't warn me?"

"I told you that going after her now would cost you several of your loyal, but stupid, followers. I never told you their deaths would be wasted."

"A golem, so convincing that I never guessed it until I saw it up close. Cathryn has gotten so skilled these last thirty years."

"I have to applaud the genius of it," said the voice. "She tapped the real vortex to the fake, gave it all of her memories and made it so it thought it was the real one. She gave it control of itself and since it wasn't a real mind, you couldn't take it over and your fools couldn't stop it."

"So, what can I take back from this situation so that it wasn’t total loss?"

"Well, your remaining force is much better at following orders if that brings you any comfort."

"Hardly any, but I suppose it was an experiment."

Nethizar turned toward the shadow again. "Next fight, I expect you to participate. You may be the most loyal solider in my army, but you cannot expect to hide away during battle. Your information is valuable, but not enough to show me your loyalty."

"You have my word that there will be only one last battle," Lexi said as she stepped from the shadows and walked toward the door. "And I will be there." she said as left, closing the door behind her.
 

~*~
 
Calmly Lexi disappeared from the warehouse and reappeared in a darkened room, concrete bricks making up the walls. A small window high on the wall let a tiny amount of light fall onto a meager, somewhat threadbare bed.

"Is everything going to plan?"

"Yes mother," Lexi answered, turning toward the wall under the window. "They fell right into Cathryn's trap, sooner than she expected, but the herd needed to be thinned."

"Any deviations?"

"Minor, had to remove two cultists myself."

"Where are they?"

"Reentering the atmosphere somewhere over Siberia."

"Intriguing."

"Thought you would appreciate it."

Lexi turned to face her mother. She hated doing this, as it made her both angry and nauseous."

"You should be getting back upstairs," the sickly woman, who Lexi knew had once been Terri, said. "They will be wondering where you went."

"How are you feeling?"

"Dying slowly as usual," came a reply. "I am using all my strength and power just to keep from rotting any further."

"You can't leave me yet," Lexi said. "She can't draw enough mana by herself."

"I will continue," she said. "For you, I will do anything."

Lexi thought silently to herself, "As will I."

---

 
To Be Continued...
 
End of Chapter Twenty-One