Eighteen-year-old Nicholas Hammerstein is at the cusp of finishing high school in his hometown of Los Alamos, NM. He has a seemingly ideal life and is blessed with loving parents, a cute baby sister, and great friends. Nicholas is a gifted student and martial artist who has dreams of leaving for college at the end of his senior year. But, living in a world of Emergent humans, he will soon find his life turned upside down as his life and the fate of a kingdom hang in the balance. His future and theirs will be determined by how he navigates the drastic changes in his body and the magical and superpowered Mergent population he joins.

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The Legal Stuff: Emerald Princess © 2016-2023 By Sofia Hammerstein
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2016-2023 By Sofia Hammerstein. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
 
 
Chapter 34: Babysat

THE REST OF the ‘day’ I spent in Caireen’s Castle saw a massive search being done for Rosemerta. I was sure she’d somehow escaped after the fake guards released her. I wasn’t sure how they had removed her from the bindings Caireen, and I had trapped her with, but we knew she was out there and still very dangerous. Then, just before I had been put to bed that night, Caireen received some bad news. One of the villages on the outskirts of our kingdom had been attacked. It was going to be a full-on war was my last thought as she soothed me to sleep.

In the ‘real’ world, I was woken by Camille trying to change my diaper without waking me up. “Oh, I’m sorry, Sofia. I didn’t mean to wake you!” She said.

I sighed, “Believe me, I’m really glad you woke me up...”

Camille’s voice changed suddenly, “What is going on in the kingdom, Your Highness?”

“How did you know?” I started before shaking my head, “It’s not good. King Camulus made an attempt to kidnap me a week ago and tried repeating that today… His spies were tasked to kill Caireen and me if they couldn’t kidnap me.”

I saw instant worry from both the spirit and the host. “Princess Sofia, you may be in great danger!”

“Believe me, I already know. I fought off one attack, which was really a feint before Camulus’s men tried for real later. My real fear is they’ll stop underestimating the baby… King Camulus’s troops have already started advancing on our kingdom. Yesterday they took one of our villages that border the kingdoms.”

“Your highness, if there is any way myself or our people may serve you, please let me know. I can put you in touch with our queen?”

She was referring to an alumnus of Bechtel whom I had heard so much about. “Maybe at some point, but not yet. And today, I still have to figure out what I’m doing. You’re leaving, right?”

She nodded, “I figured I would take you over to Caduceus and see if Hannah was being released today.”

“If not?” I asked.

“Well, let’s jump off that bridge when we come to it. Do you want a bottle or something before we go to Friar Hall for breakfast?”

I shrugged, “While we go?”

She smiled at me, “Sure, sweetie.”

I watched her fill another bottle with milk from a pouch in the fridge and magically warm it up. Then, before she gave it to me, I watched her check my backpack to be sure it was stocked with plenty of supplies. She threw a couple more diapers in there and some fresh bottles.

“Do you want a refrigerator and freezer compartment in here?” She asked.

I looked at her and suddenly smacked myself in the head, “I don’t know why I never thought of that…?”

I watched her do the spells quickly, and then she began putting some of the milk from the fridge in there too. First, I saw her looking at dates; she seemed to sort some of them. Then, she saw me looking, “I’m putting some of them in the freezer. You know you can freeze breastmilk, right?”

I shrugged, “I know my mom did that for my sister for a while. It lasts longer, right?”

“Should be good for like a year.”

“You realize with the amount Hannah pumps, she could freeze everything in the next few weeks and probably feed a regular baby off of that for like two years?”

“Not with your appetite,” she smirked and zipped my backpack.

She handed me the warmed bottle, threw one strap of the small bag over her shoulders, grabbed me, and we were off.

At Friar Hall, I must have been asked where Hannah was a half-dozen times and another dozen times, ‘where’s your mommy?’ For her part, Camille had several girls that seemed genuinely jealous that she got to babysit me! So, all-in-all, it was a pretty miserable breakfast following a miserable day in Caireen’s world.

“Let’s go see how Hannah is doing!” she said as she picked me up after finishing our breakfasts. As she carried me out, I noticed how empty the hall felt, with about half of the school leaving for the holidays.

As we walked into Caduceus, I had a sinking feeling that things might not have been better. That feeling may have been directly related to the power doing weird things with the lights and a radiant green color as we approached Hannah’s room! Doctors seemed to be trying to get her blood as we walked into the door of her room.

“You shouldn’t be bringing a baby in here right now!” One doctor ordered Camille and tried to push us out the door.

“I’m not a baby,” I said to him.

He looked at me before patronizing me, “I mean, a big girl, only adults in here right now.”

I sighed, “I’m eighteen; is that adult enough?” With that, I wriggled out of Camille’s arms, walked right past the flabbergasted doctor, and jumped onto Hannah’s bed.

“What’s going on?” I asked her after a quick hug.

“They don’t know… right after you left, I started having these weird EMP-like discharges. They’re like my pyrokinetic charges go when I want them to… But things started flashing green, and I can’t control these.”

‘Any ideas, Caireen?’

‘I’m guessing the shock from yesterday?’

‘I know… any ideas to help?’

‘Let me through…?’

“Hannah, do you feel like you’re upset?” Caireen’s voice came through.

She shrugged, “No more than anyone would be who’s stuck in the hospital?”

“Have you pumped milk tonight?” Caireen asked.

“Like every hour,” she sighed, “the doctors keep wanting to test it.”

“I have one idea, nurse Sofia. Maybe it’ll calm down your discharges?”

With that, Caireen turned my body back over to me, and I looked at Hannah. One of the doctors in the room looked at me and said, “Wait, what?”

I looked at him impatiently, “You were told about our bond?” He nodded. “You know that milk, in theory, is being made for me?” He nodded. “Well, Caireen’s only thought is that since Hannah hasn’t been nursing me specifically, it may be the problem?”

“Oh… worth a try,” he allowed.

With that, Hannah kind of shooed him away while sitting up carefully. She bared her breast to me, and I began nursing. No matter if I closed my eyes or not, the flashing green was getting to be really annoying! I tried sensing if there was anything physically wrong with her with my magic, but there was a weird wall around Hannah.

‘Caireen?’

‘Keep nursing,’ she said, ‘I’m looking.’

When she shifted me to the other side, I felt Caireen sigh. ‘Sofia, I don’t think this is anything that will be fixable for a few days. Her system is just out of whack with the discharge and how your magical shield impacted her abilities… I’m guessing it’ll be three to five days before she’ll be better.’

‘She’ll get better?’

‘She should.’

‘Will she be able to go back to our room?’ I asked.

‘With as bad as those electrical fluctuations are, the doctors will never let her out of here like this.’

A few minutes later, I discovered I was nursing on an empty breast and popped my head up. There was absolutely no change to Hannah’s weird energy pulses, even though she seemed more relaxed. She cleaned up and redressed herself. “Well, I feel better, Sofia, but I don’t think it fixed anything,” she said.

“No, Caireen thinks it’s a matter of time.”

Camille’s voice changed, “I suspect it will actually go away a little quicker without Sofia here. I sense it may be recharging the problem right now.”

There was a little pop, and one of the monitors seemed to blow up in the corner. “Great,” Hannah said.

“Look, Hannah, I was getting ready to offer this to both of you, but seeing how you’re stuck here, Sofia probably should be elsewhere… So, Sofia, do you want to come with me to New York City? I bet we could still get another train ticket? Or actually, you’re probably free...”

Hannah looked nervous, “What if the EPC recognizes her?”

“I’m not saying yes yet, but...” I told her but changed my hair to blonde and my eyes to a natural but pretty blue.

“You should keep that,” Hannah said with a smile, “it suits you. What about facial scanners?”

“Well, they work by taking some measurements of the geometry of the face, so…” I moved my eyes just slightly closer together, and my nose was smaller. So my appearance now looked like my bone structure was just a little smaller.

The doctor who came back into the room said, “fascinating.”

“There’s another reason it would be a good idea, Han,” Camille said. “Sofia told me about her upcoming assignment. She could hang out with my family and little sister if she went with me.”

I groaned, “and pretend to be a regular baby the whole time?”

“Better there than here, not knowing who’s going to take care of you?”

‘She’s right; it would be a good test run.’

“Do your parents know about me?” I asked Camille.

“They will, and I’m not saying you can’t be yourself sometimes, but let’s just say you pretend for my sister’s sake?”

“Go,” Hannah told me.

“But…”

“If you don’t go, how will you get out of your crib?”

“Umm…”

“All of our friends are basically gone on vacation. So what happens if someone decides to pull a prank? There are a million reasons, but this will also keep you from being bored in our room.”

I thought, “Only if I can take the textbooks with me and get caught up?”

Camille nodded, “We can do that. Let me go call my parents really quick.” She stopped for a moment, “Sofia, why don’t you go ahead and give me your parents’ number so my parents can talk to them if they want?”

I pulled the purse out of the dimensional pocket I stored it in and dug my cell phone out. I sent Camille the contact information for my home and mom.

“I’ll be right back,” she told us.

I took the opportunity to snuggle into Hannah. “I really don’t want to go,” I told her.

“You need to, though,” she told me, “she’s especially right about the baby experience.”

I sighed, “I know.”

She squeezed me, “Besides, it’ll probably do us both some good to have a few days of space.”

I turned my head to look at her, “You don’t believe that any more than I do.”

Tears started coming from her eyes, “I know.”

I hugged her and let her hold me tight for about half an hour before Camille returned. “Okay, I called my mom, she talked to your mom, and it’s all set, Sofia!”

“Are you sure you’ll be okay?” I asked Hannah.

“I’ll be fine, Princess,” she reassured me.

“Do you want to make a list of things you need from your room, and we’ll swing them back by on our way?”

She gave us a list, and Camille carried me back across the campus to our room. “Okay, Sofia, we’ve got to get moving quick. Can you find the stuff that Hannah said she needed?”

I nodded, “sure.”

I climbed over her desk and bed, went through her drawers, and even found some cookies from our mom’s last week. I put everything inside the backpack I had made bigger for her and smiled at Camille, who had her own pile of things. She had the diaper bag my mom had sent me, my backpack, Esmie, my teddy bear, and a few other things like a stroller.

“Where’d you get the stroller?” I asked.

She shrugged, “You had a doll stroller in the toy box. I started by making it bigger and more like my sisters.”

I nodded, “Hanging out with Hannah so much I forget other people can do magic!”

“You said you wanted your books; which ones do you need to take?”

I grabbed all my textbooks from the pile I had left on the floor and carried them to my bag. They all went to the places that I had made for them there. I thought for a second and then grabbed the laptop I had been given on my desk and put it there too.

“Not sure how much time I want to let you get on the computer if we’re planning on you pretending,” Camille told me.

I shrugged, “I just figured it would be good to have it. So we’ll be gone five days?” She nodded, “I just don’t want to get to the point I need it and not have it.”

I watched her give the room one last look, “Anything you can think of that we forgot?”

“You grabbed my clothes?” I asked.

“Yep, plenty of dresses and outfits to choose from... and plenty of diapers, wipes, etc. too!”

I groaned but was glad she had those. “Where are they?” I asked.

“I made your diaper bag larger,” she said with a smile. “Let’s change you one more time before we take this stuff to Hannah and catch the shuttle to the train station.”

I sighed but held my arms up for her to pick me up. It was a quick change; I wasn’t all that wet even, and then she sat me down in the stroller and buckled the built-in harness around me. I looked up, depressed at being restrained like a baby. Camille must have read my mind because she laughed, “Here, suck on your paci for a while,” placing one of my pacifiers in my mouth.

I groaned but sat back in the stroller as she messed around a bit around the back where I couldn’t see. The stroller was very comfy, with a little table in front that I could rest stuff on. It even seemed like it leaned back for naps like my sisters did. I didn’t like the fact I couldn’t really lean forward to see, though, due to the harness straps. “Almost done, Princess,” she called to me.

True to her word, a moment later, she pushed me out the door and towards the elevator. One of the upperclassmen that had stuck around was in the elevator. “You know Sofia, you get to be a cuter baby every time I see you.”

I blushed.

“What’s up with the extra baby gear? Where’s Hannah?” she asked Camille.

“Yesterday Hannah tried a new trick with her powers and had a bit of an accident on the firing range. Sofia put a shield up to save her with her magic but didn’t take it down before Hannah did the mommy thing of trying to pick up her baby with the near-death experience.”

The girl laughed a bit, “Her shield was still up?”

“Got it!”

“So that should have just knocked her down?”

“Normally, but apparently, she had some odd reaction with that and her powers, so she’s in Caduceus for a few days until it clears.”

“So, Sofia needed a babysitter…?”

“I am right here, you know,” I said, pulling the pacifier out of my mouth.

They both laughed, “So you look like you’re packed to go somewhere, meeting your family?”

They talked then about things other than me as the elevator doors opened, and we began walking towards Caduceus. There we didn’t have much time, Camille said, so she handed Hannah her bags, and other than a quick hug from Hannah, I quickly returned to my stroller to go on a new adventure.

 
 

THE RIDE ON the shuttle to the station was pretty uneventful. Camille had called ahead, and they had a car seat ready for me to sit in. So we grabbed our luggage, and we were on the road. Once there, she buckled me back in the stroller and said, “Okay, Sofia, let’s see how long you can keep up the eighteen-months stuff.”

I started to sigh but chose to smile and say, “Baba!” instead.

She smiled at me and produced a warmed bottle that I nursed. At the same time, she sorted out her ticket and our luggage with the porter. She finally picked me up from the stroller stowed and carried me onto the train, still sucking on a now-empty bottle. I noticed Camille was getting looks like Hannah now, and I felt bad.

“Auntie twain!” I exclaimed as we sat down in a row of seats.

“Yep, Princess, we’re on a train!” She smiled, knowing I knew it was a game worth playing. Several people were sitting around us. An older grandmotherly lady looked to be knitting a scarf out of some purple yarn a seat ahead of us. Sitting in the chair beside us was a mom and a girl of about six. They were looking out the window as the girl excitedly pointed at things. Finally, a man who kind of stuck out as odd with a hat across his face looked like he was trying to sleep. Something about him was off, though.

“She’s adorable!” The grandmotherly lady said, taking my attention from him. “How old is she?”

“She’s eighteen months,” Camille said with a smile and clapped my hands together for some reason.

“She said, Auntie?”

“Yeah, she’s my sister’s baby. She’s unfortunately in the hospital this week. Her husband is staying with her, so they asked if I could take her,” she tickled me and then squeezed, “I couldn’t say no to her. Plus, this way, she gets to see her Grammy and Grampa, huh?”

They talked for the next several minutes, and then the mother of the six-year-old girl, who I knew now as Kelsey, would chat. I was kind of bored, so I started making fussy sounds. “Is her diapee wet?” The little girl asked.

“I don’t know,” Camille said with a smile. “I guess we should check! That would be a good reason for her to be fussy, huh?”

“Uh-huh!” She said, “My dolly fusses at me if her diaper is wet too!”

She showed Camille her doll with absolute pride. Camille chose that moment to pop open a few snaps on my romper legs and said, “Well, what do you know, you’re exactly right!” To the little girl. “Do you want to help me change her?”

I buried my head in Camille’s shirt, ‘Really?’ I begged.

‘Baby, remember?’ Caireen reminded me. ‘You can’t care.’

I sighed internally but just fussed some more so that Camille picked me up and asked her mom, “I’d be happy to take your daughter to the restroom while we change little Sofia here?”

Her mom smiled at us, “Thanks!”

Once we got to the bathroom, she told Kelsey, “Go potty first, and then we’ll change her diapee together.”

I was placed on the ground while she dug into my diaper bag for a changing pad, diaper, wipes, and everything else. I thought she would set me on the changing table, but instead, she just laid the mat beside us. Then, Kelsey came out excitedly, “I help now?”

“Wash your hands first,” she told her. I watched while she helped her before she came back and sat me down on the mat.

“I never changed a diaper before…?” The girl said a little worriedly.

“Don’t worry, I hadn’t ever either, but my mommy showed me just how I’m going to show you!”

“Okay!” She giggled.

Thankfully at that moment, Camille put a pacifier in my mouth. I sucked on it as if my life depended on it! Then, she had her undo the snaps along my legs while she said, “good baby,” to me.

It may have been the longest ten minutes of my life! Camille actually let her do almost all the work of wiping me and putting a new diaper under my butt! The only thing she did was make sure that the tapes were tight. When we returned to our seats, I felt something between being mortified and something else… accepting?

Back seated, I spat my pacifier out and said, “Baba?”

Camille warmed a bottle up surreptitiously before handing it to me to drink. “We have a few hours before we’ll get there, Sweetie. Why don’t you take a nap?”

I was warm and comfy in her arms, so I took her advice.

 
 

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