A New Direction - Chapter 2
By Misty Steppes

Note: This is a story set in the Whateley Academy Universe, but it is non-canon, and written without explicit permission - that being said, I'm going to do my best to remain within the bounds of the canon stories' events. Many thanks to Maggie Finson and all of the wonderful WA authors for this playground!

I was originally going to sit on this a couple weeks, to both gauge interest and give myself some ideas, but my muse decided to spit out three thousand words, and suddenly it was three in the morning with a double-length chapter sitting in front of me. And lo, this chapter was born!

“Eh? My eyes are blue, dipshit. Stop messing with me.”

I punched John in the arm lightly, and started following him outside. He looked back at me again, but shrugged and didn’t say anything. Well that was weird. But okay.

It wasn’t as if I wasn’t familiar with how mutant manifestations worked. I’d heard that changing eyes was often one of the tell-tale signs - but it could just as easily be a trick of the light, a change over time, or any number of other things, including John messing with me. Somehow, though, I suspected it wasn’t any of those... I just shook my head. Not worth worrying about at the moment.

The two of us walked the whole way home, and thankfully my strange bout of unconsciousness didn’t return. I wasn’t oblivious of the weird looks John kept giving me, and the awkward silence didn’t help either - I was lost in thought pretty much the whole time. Was I a mutant? I couldn’t see my own damn eyes, since I didn’t have a phone and the closest mirror was in my house, but I had no good reason to distrust John, especially with how he was acting. How would my family take it? My friends? When John said his goodbyes and walked up his driveway, I barely noticed. My dad waved at me from the front yard of our house, mowing the lawn, but I didn’t respond - instead I hurried inside through the unlocked front door, and stumbled up the stairs and into the bathroom. I looked in the mirror.

Well that settles that…

Staring back at me, besides my normal pale skin and messy brown hair, were a pair of cloudy grey eyes. They seemed slightly larger, as well - not unnaturally so, but all the same. There was no hint of their former sky blue, a trait I had originally shared with my mother. Speaking of,

“Mom!” I yelled, and I quickly heard her footfalls on the stairs. She appeared in the doorway - our eyes met, and she knew immediately what was wrong.

“Oh, hun... “ She enveloped me in a bone-crushing hug, and I gasped for breath before she eased up. “You’ll be alright. I’ll see if there’s a good powers-testing place nearby, my friend Katie should know, and we’ll get you sorted.

“You should get some rest, alright?” I opened my mouth to protest, but as she withdrew from the hug I got a withering glare that stopped me mid-breath. “I may not be a mutant, but I’ve heard manifestation can be rough on you. I’ll not have my son getting hurt because he can’t be cautious!” I was subsequently frogmarched to my room, and off my mother went to be her usual hurricane of activity - even more so than usual, at that.

I flopped back onto my bed with a sigh. The notebooks I had piled there spilled over the edge of the mattress and onto the ground, but I couldn’t be bothered to pick them up. Now what the hell am I going to do now?

Staring up at the ceiling, my eyes began to grow heavy, which I thought was odd - it was only like two in the afternoon. My head started to get warm... then the rest of my body... and the darkness returned once again.

~o~O~o~

The endless white void had returned once again. My sudden fatigue had disappeared just as quickly as it had arrived, but the weird warm feeling was still there. Unlike my last visit, the strange seated silhouettes were now directly in front of me from the start - but once again they seemed to be staring at me. I just looked back at all nine of them awkwardly.

Their murmuring and hushed discussions returned, but this time I could catch the occasional word: “Manifestation… Host… Director.” The first one made sense, given previous events in the waking world. The other two? Not so much.

I tried my hand at speaking again, and to my surprise, “Umm… hi?” My voice rang out in the void. It sounded kind of weird, in a way I couldn’t place.

“Hey, boss.” I whirled around again, even more surprised than I was in my first visit to the void.

“Wosh, boss! Chill.” Standing opposite me was a professionally dressed young woman, her black hair and suit both in stark contrast to the white background. The easy smile on her face put me somewhat at ease, but can you blame me for being weirded out? She offered a hand, and I reluctantly shook it.

She laughed, “I’m sure this is weird for you, boss, but that’s why I’m here. Those old farts,” she gestured to the silhouettes behind me, “aren’t quite fully formed up here yet, so I have to do a little translation and messenger work in the meantime.”

I interrupted her before she continued, “Where are we, anyway?”

“In your head, of course.”

“Wha-?” She cut me off.
“It’ll all be clear in time, boss. Trust me. With that out of the way, allow me to introduce myself. My name is… hard to pronounce, but you can call me Brynn. I’m your... I guess secretary is right? Yeah. Secretary.” She gave an impromptu curtsy, breaking into laughter halfway through.

“My secretary? Why do I need a secretary?”

“Because you’re the Director, of course. All company executives need a secretary, right?”

I don’t know. Do they? I decided to just roll with it for the moment, and nodded, letting her continue.

“Anyway, those geezers are the Board, and you’ve been chosen to be the Director. We are collectively the Company, and you’re in charge of the whole shebang - though obviously you get your power from the Board.” Brynn said all of this like it was obvious, but I still had absolutely no goddamn clue what was going on. I glanced behind me, and the shadow people were still sitting at their table.

“And what’s this Company? What does it… we… do?”

“Whatever you tell us to, of course,” she said, totally deadpan. I blinked.

“I got that bit. I mean- My question is, what purpose does the company serve? I don’t need a company, or a board. I’m just a highschooler, not even yet.”

“Well I’m sure the board has goals, but what they are they haven’t told me - and ultimately, they can’t really just pick another Director, for... reasons.” Well if that wasn’t an obvious signal that she was hiding things from me, I didn’t know what was. I raised an eyebrow at her, and she stammered, “Some of this is stuff the Board wants to communicate on their own. They don’t want me jumping the gun, and I don’t want them mad at me.”

“Fine. I’ll deal with it for now… Brynn, right?” She nodded. “So what powers does this Board give me?”

“Damned if I know. I’m sure they could tell you, if not for that whole ‘not fully formed’ thing.”

“Then... why are you here?”

Brynn looked down at her feet, and I kind of felt bad. “Umm… I think you’ll figure out most of it once you wake up.” She paused for a moment, and jumped - she had a grin on her face now. “Oh! There is one thing I can help you with, though.”

Oh? I looked at her, waiting for her to continue.
“Alright. So close your eyes, and imagine a company boardroom.” Seemed easy enough. I closed my eyes, and tried to remember what a boardroom should look like. Marble floors… probably glass walls, that look out onto the rest of the building. Maybe it’s that fancy glass that frosts when you flip a switch. For some reason my mind kept going back to the U-shaped table that the Board had, but then another rectangular table opposite to it, bringing it full circle.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Okay, now open your eyes.” The void had vanished - or, at least, been pushed back a little. Everything I’d imagine now surrounded us, right down to the electric frosted glass (I spotted the tell-tale switch) and the extra table in front of the board. Unfortunately, the Board members themselves were still just shadows, but it was an improvement on the endless white void.

“Tadaaaa,” Brynn did a little twirl, and her heels clicked on the new marble floor. “Fancy, right? You can do pretty much whatever you want in here. Perks of being the Director, I s’pose.”

I imagined a pair of those nice Aeron chairs, and they popped into existence in front of us. Convenient, I thought to myself, and wearily dropped into one of them, gesturing for Brynn to do the same.

“So. How do I wake up, anyway?” I pinched myself, but all I got for my trouble was a slight red mark on my arm that quickly faded. Brynn stifled a giggle in response, saying, “Well, from what I can tell, you’re finishing your manifestation right now. I don’t get how any of it works, but supposedly the Board is devoting a not-insignificant amount of energy into speeding the process up, partially to keep you from the stress of an extended transformation, and partially to get the ball rolling on the Company’s development. Even with that, though, I suspect you’ll be stuck here for a couple hours.”

“Well that sucks, but I guess it’s better than the alternative?” I didn’t really know what the alternative would be like, but my “secretary” nodded solemnly.

“Indeed. So,” Brynn clapped her hands, “tell me a little about yourself.”

~o~O~o~

We spent the next couple hours just talking about ourselves. I was doing most of the talking - Brynn was strangely vague, and all I really got out of her was that she had a bunch of younger sisters, and that they were always fighting so it was pretty stressful. She wouldn’t even tell me their names - I started to press her, but I eventually let it go.

Instead, I told her about my family, from the hurricane that was my mom and her management work to my dad being a stay-at-home programmer who mostly spent his days waiting for work, only to make handsome sums off of new contracts. Then there was my older brother, and my younger sister - the former, Brandon, was off at college in New York, while the latter, Savannah, had just started middle school at my alma mater, Blackmoor Middle. The larger age gap between Brandon and I meant that we got along a little better - our childhoods didn’t really overlap too much, so he was able to do the whole “guardian angel” thing without me being too much of an annoyance. Savannah, on the other hand, was only a couple years behind me, and we clashed at pretty much every turn - I eventually learned to just keep my distance and let her do her thing, not that that kept me entirely out of trouble even then.

I felt a little bit bad complaining to Brynn about my family life, but she just laughed and waved me off when I tried to apologize. So that eventually led to me talking about how I got pretty much no attention from my parents whenever my sister was around, and she was pretty much all they talked about. That was actually what led me to the whole “favors” thing in the first place - it made me feel like I was important, and that I was actually valuable to people. Weird, I guess, but it worked for me.

I started talking about my “business”, which seemed to catch her interest, but as I got into the specifics I started to feel warm and fuzzy again. My eyes felt heavy, and I struggled to keep them open. Brynn just smiled at me, and held my hand.

“Looks like you’re ready to wake up. No need to fight it.”

I nodded slightly, and let the fatigue wash over me. Leaning back in the chair, I felt my body grow lighter, and I started to drift off.

“Sweet dreams… Fiona.”

~o~O~o~

The real world slowly returned to me, and I blinked quickly to try to adapt to the light. My eyes felt weird… my face felt weird… shit, EVERYTHING felt weird. For one, my weight seemed way off - most of my body seemed lighter, except for my upper body, which seemed heavier if anything. Second, everything seemed way clearer - as my eyes finally finished adjusting, I discovered that I could pick out details on the ceiling that I definitely couldn’t before, and even the relatively plain color of the ceiling seemed way more vibrant than before. Third of all… I looked down. ...A large pair of lumps said on my chest, threatening to tear through the shirt I had gone to sleep in. Naturally, I did what any real manly man would do: Screamed my head off.

The real kicker, of course, was that my scream sounded even more like that of a damsel in distress than it would before I woke up like this. I don’t even know how to describe those typical “damsel screams” in movies, but this was that.

I was frozen in shock for a while, even after my screaming stopped. A minute later I heard the door open - I couldn’t bring myself to turn my head and look, but I already knew it was my mom again.

“Oh my god, Ethan…” She just stood there for a moment, but eventually I got smothered by yet another hug. The… lumps… on my chest made the hug feel pretty weird, but I wasn’t going to push her away. My cheek felt wet - I wasn’t sure if it was my tears, hers, or both. Eventually, though, she drew back and stood up.

“I was going to schedule powers testing for this weekend… but somehow I think we should move that up. I’m gonna see if Katie can come over-” She saw the fear in my face at the idea of anyone else seeing me like this. “I know, honey, but she’s the only mutant I know who might be able to help us. While I go call her, you should go take a look at yourself - no use just laying here.” After planting a kiss on my forehead, I heard her walk off, and I heard the sound of my door clicking shut.

“Welp,” I said to myself, and immediately covered my mouth - the smooth, feminine sound that was coming from my own lips just felt wrong. I closed my eyes. Alright, Ethan. Let’s get this over with.

Slowly, I rose to my feet, doing my best to ignore the weird feelings from every part of my body. The wobbling of my chest. The twisting of my hips and waist. The weight of the hair on my head and the weird shape of my lips. No! Stop. Keep walking. I grit my teeth, stared straight ahead, and pulled the door open. The walk to the bathroom was the strangest experience of my life, my earlier weird dreams included, but I made it across the hall and to the bathroom. Then I looked in the full-body mirror that awaited me.

I didn’t recognize the girl in the mirror.

Flowing golden blonde locks framed her perfect heart-shaped face, flowing all the way down to the middle of her back. Her long, thick eyelashes and piercing grey eyes were entrancing, but so too were her lips - perfectly formed in a cupid’s bow, puffy and inviting. Her dainty, upturned nose and high, yet softly defined cheekbones completed the enchantment that was her face, and I almost couldn’t bring myself to look further downward - but so I did. Slim shoulders were the prelude to generous cleavage, that judging by its protrusion from her t-shirt definitely didn’t belong on a fourteen year old. Despite their size, they seemed to defy gravity inside the shirt, pushing it up enough to reveal a small amount of her midriff - the trim, almost impossibly thin waist just barely visible under the shirt. Supporting it was a pair of wide hips that stretched the elastic of her sweatpants, and everything below that was secreted away beneath the loose legs of the sweats. Needless to say, even in this casual wear she seemed to be impossibly beautiful.

The problem was that she was me.