Note: This story takes place during Book 3: Finding Audrey

I waited a full minute for the Dark Pantheon screen to finish the loading sequence and I kind of sighed; it had been taking forever lately and I really wanted to know what was wrong. It definitely wasn’t on my end; this wasn’t even my computer. No matter, my character loaded into the city of Wertheral and I was finally able to survey my surroundings. Though I had become increasingly disinterested in the game over time I still felt very much at home here with my character. Creating Audri was really the first time I’d actually managed to present as a girl without feeling embarrassed about it. Now, here I was sitting in a room in the Tri Pi sorority literally wearing a dress, hose, and heels like it was normal. Alicia had done my makeup and Melanie placed a warm compress on my sprained ankle. I’d told them over and over again that I could just go to the hospital, but they insisted I let them help me. Weird, right?

I began to move my character, but then I noticed that the mail icon in the upper right-hand corner of the screen was blinking. I almost didn’t check it; nearly no one uses in-game mail which meant it was probably from the system. Maybe an even reminder. Who knows? For whatever reason, I decided to walk my character over to the mailbox and take a look. It wasn’t a system mail, just a single letter from ‘GreyGirl17’. What the hell was this? I double clicked to open the letter and saw the following:

‘Meet me over by Everburning Mines.’

This was a recent message, sent maybe twenty minutes ago, and Everburning Mines was a high level zone. In fact, it had just come out with the recent expansion, so whoever I was dealing with was a pretty decent player. I was a little wary, I’ll admit. This was a full PVP game after all. Whoever it was, maybe they planned to shank me and steal all my gold. Just to be sure, I dropped all of my gold and extra items in my bank before catching a mage portal over to Everburning Mines.

As soon as I dropped out of the portal I saw her standing alone next to the dungeon entrance. She was a brigand class, sporting a black cap with a round brim, dressed in pirate long-coat and sporting a rapier tucked snugly into a scabbard at her hip.

“Um…hello??” I typed. It took her a second, but she finally sputtered to life and typed back.

“Sup Audrey?” She replied.

“Who are you???” I typed back, making sure to put extra question marks so she’d know I mean business. Then, it suddenly occurred to me that she’d spelled my name ‘Audrey’ instead of ‘Audri’. Who was this? Did she know who I was.

“It’s Tiffany, come on, don’t you recognize me?”

Tiffany? Really? In ‘Dark Pantheon’? Come to think of it the avatar definitely LOOKED like Tiffany. Why was she here, and why did she have a high level character?

“I don’t believe you,” I finally typed back. “Tiffany doesn’t play games, especially not Dark Pantheon.”

“Right,” She replied. “How’s Tri Pi?”

What the hell.

“Okay, why are you IN this game, and what’s with the high level character???”

“I’ve been playing this game since it came out,” She replied nonchalantly. “You just never bothered to ask me what my hobbies were.”

“Um, boys and makeup?” I took a jab at her.

“Among other things. Okay, so I need to talk to you about a few things, first um…there’s a sub-floor in this dungeon, if we beat four of the bosses, I get a new class hat that boosts my starts. I can’t do it alone. Second…I’m worried about you…”

“Why are you worried about me? I’m fine.”

“No you’re not,” She replied. I had a hard time gauging what she was thinking; the game didn’t allow for facial expressions. “Look um…I…we…the whole house. We haven’t really been fair to you.”

“Tiffany to be fair you caught me breaking into your house. I kind of deserve it.”

“No dammit,” Tiffany quickly typed. “Look, tying you up was…that was probably necessary. I mean we didn’t know who you were and we’re women, we can’t be too careful. I think after that we went overboard.”

“Overboard how?” What the hell was she talking about?

“Look it’s not…normal. What’s happening isn’t normal. I’m not really a soft person, but I’m super worried about you. This isn’t right.”

“Tiffany, I literally have no idea what you’re talking about,” It was like she was losing her mind. What did she think the problem was? I was getting to hang out with sorority girls and I was getting to be ONE of them. What could possibly be bad about that?

“Ugh fine,” She said. “Just know I’m worried about you and if you need to talk, I’m here.”

“Don’t you have a hat you need to get?”

“Yeah,” She replied. “Let’s go get the stupid hat.”

“What…is this?” Tiffany asked me, turning her character toward me. I noticed that her character was frowning; she had motion capture turned on. Shit, how good was her computer that it could handle face tracking? “Turn voice chat on you goober.”

I didn’t like to use voice chat, mainly because I didn’t like the sound of my own voice but what could it hurt? She knew who I was. I switched it on, paused for a second, and then, finally spoke, attempting to sound as feminine as possible.

“It’s the Everburning Mines,” I said. “I’ve been here like…a million times.”

“Not that,” Her voice came loud and clear through the mic. “Look at your spell bar, are any of your teleports greyed out?”

My eyes wandered to the top of the screen and I saw that all of my ports were disabled. Evac, call to home, call to guild hall, recall, all of it. They were all greyed out. Then I noticed another icon had appeared on my buff bar. I scrolled my mouse over it and read the description: ‘Permadeath – Due to quest conditions, death in this area will result in deletion of character from server’.

“Tiffany,” I said as calmly as possible. “What quest do you have?”

“It’s uh…Bright Ambitions…the one for the class hat. Why?”

“Share the quest with me, in your tracker, please,” I think my voice was starting to crack. I read over the quest as it popped up on my screen. ‘Bright Ambitions – Epic X4’. Holy shit. “Okay, Tiffany? This is the Epic X4 version of the quest, you shouldn’t even be able to pick this quest up unless you defeated Balgramash in the Mythic raid instance in the newest expansion and only one guild has done tha---”

I paused for a moment and looked at the guild name above her head. Oh.

“What’s the problem?” She demanded “Can’t we just go get the hat?”

“Yeah…” I confirmed. “But here’s the thing, Tiff, this quest is an Epic X4, it’s meant for eight people. It’s um…if we die in here we lose our characters.”

“What?!” Her voice screeched over the mic, I recoiled back in my chair and whimpered at the stress transferred to my sprained ankle. Thank god no one was in the Tri Pi house, they would have come running. Ever since I’d gotten here they’d been waiting on me hand and foot, even insisting that I make an appointment with some therapist. I don’t know what their deal was. “I can’t lose my character! I’ve played this since launch! Shit, shit shit! I’m out of here!”

I watched her character as it flew past me, to the door of the dungeon. As I expected, it didn’t open.

“I’ve paid for things on this character! I bought this outfit on the marketplace!”

“Tiffany,” I said calmly, but she interrupted me before I could get anything else out.

“What do we do Audrey? What the hell do we do?!”

“We get the hat,” I said, speaking calmly once again. “We get down to that sub-floor and fight the four bosses, and then we take the hat. It’s just…going to be a little harder than normal.”

“Audrey,” Tiffany said, her voice way too shaky. “I’m a brigand, you’re a wizard. We don’t have a tank, we don’t have a priest, we’re going to die.”

“I can fill in for the priest,” I said. “I have a stack of restoration scrolls and I can create a n arcane barrier around us that blocks physical attacks. I should have enough concentration to create a physical barrier as well. Then you can stand behind it and attack them with your melee. It’s a little half-assed but not impossible.”

“Ugh…okay…you’re the expert here,” She said. I don’t know how much of an expert I was, based on her level. She’d been playing this for a long time. Then again it was possible to play an MMO forever and still have no idea how it worked. Maybe that’s what was happening here.

We stepped forward into the dungeon, walking in silence until we reached the first marker. Ahead I could see the monsters, copies of the ones from the overworld which would have been harmless up there. Down here they were Heroic X3 and would human centipede Tiffany and I together if they got their hands on a sewing kit. We had to be ready. I quickly moved forward and cast the arcane shield while Tiffany charged into it, sword drawn and taking the first swipe.

“I’m not doing any damage!” She screamed. “Nothing’s happening!”

“I’m casting a mitigation debuff,” I said calmly. “It’ll reduce their resistance to physical damage by 8. Cast your damage multiplier to increase your damage by 12, I’ll cast hateful respite, it’ll multiply your damage by 32 every 8 seconds multiplied by the amount of damage you do pers second.”

“What?!” She shouted frantically.

“Just use your damage multiplier.”

She must have done it right because somehow she struck a rhythm and began to cut them down. It took longer than it should have but one by one, the creatures fell behind he shield until there was a pile of bodies, fresh for the stepping-over. We divided the loot, which wasn’t all that great but it was better than nothing.

“I still want to talk to you,” She said. “I want to know how you’re feeling.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked curiously. “I mean…like…you’ve never cared before?”

“Look, I act tough but I do actually care how you’re feeling. We’ve put you through a lot, the whole girl thing was-“

“My fault,” I said to her as we made our way down the hall and took a left, into a room that looked like nothing but a giant trap. “I broke into your house, I put Aleah’s dress on. So you guys took it out of my hide, so to speak, but I have to learn to take responsibility for my own actions. You didn’t actually blackmail me, I could have walked away at any time, but do you know why I stuck around?”

There was a moment of silence, as if she was really thinking about how to answer that. I took advantage of her silence to answer anyway.

“I stayed because it was what I wanted. Do you know how long I’ve fantasized about being a girl? Like, do you know how incredible it was to me that a group of girls in a SORORITY suddenly wanted to turn me into one of them? You don’t get it, Tiffany. Under all this, I’m a girl. There’s a girl, in my head, trapped, and she wants to get out. I would have been so afraid to admit that before you guys got your hands on me, but you…you did so many things for me-“

“We practically tortured you,” She said pointedly.

“A little,” I admitted. “But…you made me…more confident. You…made me understand that my fantasies weren’t just fantasies, Tiffany. You…showed me that I CAN be this. I…I can be Audrey in more than just the game. I can be her in real life and I can’t thank you enough for that.”

“I guess that…maybe it makes sense,” She sort of stuttered. “Maybe you can thank me by helping me get this hat?”

“The hat would be a start,” I chuckled. “Okay, next room. I’m going to cast Arcane Presence, you get your sword ready.”

“He’s down to 15% health, Tiffany, use something, ANYTHING other than your base attack! Hit him where it hurts!” I watched Tiffany, out in front of me swinging her sword wildly as she tried to take down the third boss. We were almost there. We’d been down here for three hours and I didn’t know how much longer I could keep it up. The Tri Pi’s would be back soon and they’d want to...do whatever it was they were going to do. They said there would be low carb muffins tonight. I kind of liked the pampering, actually, and they’d given me all kinds of advice on transitioning but only if I wanted to go in that direction. They’d even brought in a few trans girls to talk to me about the future. Overall my stay here had been really amazing but what was happening right now? That was less than amazing. We’d almost died at least fifty times, and Tiffany HAD died once. Thank god I’d been carrying a few resurrection scrolls but I felt like our luck was about to run out.

“Maybe you could actually attack for once?!” Her voice crackled over the speakers and if I hadn’t been so intent on keeping us alive I might have actually rolled my eyes.

“Tiffany,” I said. “I have a limited amount of MP and 1017 potions to recover it. I know that sounds like a lot but they go fast, we have one more boss, and a ton of monsters to fight before we get there. If I stop protecting us to use any of my frost abilities the shield will drop and we’ll die. Please, for the love of god, just keep hitting him.”

“You don’t have to be so condescending!” She shrieked as her own health bar dropped below 10%. I fired off a scroll of Celestial Mitigation and watched as her health bar was filled with a transparent red, supplementing what she had left with a shield. I recast the wall of shielding and breathed a sigh of relief as she struck the final blow and the boss crashed to the floor. Thank god.

“Any loot?” I asked as I walked toward the center of the room.

“Just leather armor,” She said, sighing. “It’s a level below what I have on.”

“What a shitty dungeon,” I muttered.

“Hey, what’s with the doors?” She used the /point command to make her character indicate a set of four doors behind the boss, all of which were sealed tightly shut. They wouldn’t open of course, not on this sever.

“It’s uh…Okay so this dungeon has two purposes, the first is to get you that stupid class hat, which we’re going for, the second is to awaken the Dain. See um, in the game, ten thousand years ago the world was ruled by the Dark Pantheon, but they disappeared. The developers revealed later on that the Pantheon had been defeated in battle and were forced into a sort of hibernation. All over the game world there are these…crypts, each one containing one of the ten members of the Pantheon – one for every class in the game. We don’t know where the others are, but we know that the Dain is in this one. He’s a dwarf that represents the bard class.”

“Wait,” Tiffany said, the motion tracking from her webcam picking up a bit of confusion “If it’s a questline to wake him up then why hasn’t anyone done it?”

“A few reasons,” I said. “First of all, even though we know where he is, there’s a year-long quest to access the tomb behind those doors. Secondly, awakening the Dain would destroy this dungeon which happens to be the only source of Magelite – the material we use to craft Zate armor. If the Dain is awakened, the loot tables change, forever. It’s happened on the other servers but this is a Player vs. Player server – we need the armor. There’s a group called the ‘Standard of the Dain’ that’s trying to wake him up, but we’ve stopped them at every turn.”

“Then I guess we should avoid that,” Tiffany agreed.

“Well no one’s done the quest, we’re too busy killing eachother on this server,” I pointed out. “And, even more importantly, because The Dain is a bard, only a bard can awaken him. Part of the access quest is finding the song that will awaken him. I’m a mage, you’re a brigand, I don’t think either of us can play a lute. ”

She chuckled a little and we moved on, leaving the boss behind us.

“So…what are you doing over at Tri Pi?” Tiffany asked. I couldn’t decide if she was trying to make small talk or pump me for information.

“They um…they’re teaching me how to girl…I guess they’re worried about how I eat. Oh, and…they taught me some cool makeup things.”

“Is that all?”

“I mean…no,” I said nervously. “They asked me if I wanted to transition. They bought some other trans girls in to talk to me.”

“Who? Anyone I know?”

“Uh…one of them was Kari, that girl from the Omega house. She was really nice. They told me a lot of things I didn’t know. Like…what’ll happen with hormones…and stuff. It’s all really complicated but I mean, it’s a lot more…in reach than it was if you know what I mean.”

“Wait so you DO want to transition?” She asked curiously as we turned the corner and stood in front of another hall full of monsters. We fought our way though, this time easily. It was all pretty much the same through here, despite it being stupidly hard.

“I think I do, yeah. Before this I would have said no, definitely, but…now…I mean like you said, you guys took things a little far but you showed me so many things. When I’m at the GAT house and when I’m dressed up I feel like myself. I don’t want it to end, but then it does, it always has to end because I can’t be Audrey outside. I feel like it’s just not enough anymore. I don’t know…what to do.”

“Have you thought about telling Mason?” She asked me seriously as we approached the final boss chamber. It was a round space with a domed ceiling, I could see the giant minotaur standing in the center. This was a fight meant for eight people, and even then it could barely be handled. This was a mistake. I knew that at this fight we were going to lose out characters but I just didn’t have the heart to tell Tiffany. She’d made a mistake and I already felt bad that she was going to hate herself for it.

“I can’t do that,” I said, kind of sadly. “You saw what happened with Chastity, I don’t know if I can handle that happening twice.”

“But if it does happen again, was he really your friend?”

I sat there in silence for a second. I hated that she was right.

“I don’t know,” It was all I could say.

“Audrey?” She said softly.

“Yeah?”

“If you ever do tell him and if he…does what Chastity did, I’ll still be your friend, no matter what happens, okay?”

“Wait, you mean we’re friends? I thought you-“

“I don’t hate you,” She said firmly. “I’m hard on you because I think you can do better than you’re doing. I know you want to be a woman and I want you to be the best you can be, but I don’t hate you. I want you to remember that no matter what happens now, ten minutes from now, or ten years from now, you can always call me, and I’ll always answer, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, not really able to process what had just happened. “Let’s uh…let’s just…finish this.”

“Tiff, before we go in here, I just…want to let you know I had a lot of fun,” I sighed. “I didn’t even know you played this game and…I really like playing with you. Do you think if we lose our characters here we could still play again sometime?”

“Audrey, honey, of course we can play again, and we’re NOT going to lose our characters,” She reassured me.

“I like your optimism,” I said drearily. “But the fact is…that boss hits for one third of our health every time, and it has adds that pop every ten seconds. We could have barely made it with a full party, but with just the two of us? I’m really sorry, this has to suck.”

“Audrey, honey,” She said, her character mirroring her real life head shaking. “You have to think positive, okay? I know we’re going to get through this.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, shaking my head and squeezing my eyes shut briefly as I tried to reconcile the fact that we were about to lose years worth of progress. The sad thing is I KNEW this could happen; it’s always been an issue with epic quests like this, it’s just that in the past we’d come in with large groups, we knew the raid, and we were always on top of our game. This was so half assed I don’t even know how to begin to describe it. “Let’s do this.”

There was a ‘swish’ as Tiffany drew her rapier from its scabbard, a typical brigand weapon. I have to admit her character looked kind of hot. Maybe I could get her to dress up like a pirate in real life. Yeah, I probably shouldn’t ask that. Pursing my lips I waited for her to lead us into the room, which she did. I stayed a good distance behind her and cast a few shields, keeping my finger on the healing scrolls that I’d equipped in one of the hotbars. I was going to need them.

“Ready?” She asked.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I said, trying to stifle the desperation in my voice.

“Okay, three, two—” Suddenly, she stopped counting, and the most fucking incredible thing happened. A flash of light emanated from her rapier, blasting the boss and taking it down to 0 HP in a single blow. In the next second a less amazing thing happened, her entire outfit changed from the brigand overcoat to flowy, silky blue top and black leather pants, laced up the sides and complicated by a pair of black heeled boots. Her hair changed as well, it went from a dirty brown to a magnificent, glowing red. Finally, I noticed that her level had changed, she increased from 82 to 100, and stood there staring at me with a shit eating grin as the boss collapsed in a pile behind her.

“Um..Tiffany?” I said squeakily. “What…what just…”

“I’m sorry, Audrey,” She said, grinning again. “You did the access quest for this dungeon, it takes way too long. I needed you.”

“What are you talking about?” I demanded. As I spoke, I noticed she was inching her way to the center of the room, toward the pedestal. The Dain’s Respite, it was called. For years it had sat dormant in the game, but recently, a bard in my guild had figured out that when you stood on it, a song appeared in his hotbar. It was presumed that the spell would reveal the location of the Horn of Schar, the instrument that could be used to awaken the Dain, hidden somewhere off in a far flung portion of the game world. On other servers this presumption proved to be correct. But Tiffany was a brigand, she couldn’t…could she? I held my mouse over her character and nearly choked: her class had changed from ‘Brigand’ to ‘Bard’. Holy shit.

“I’ve been using an illusion form,” She explained. “And I’m sorry, but you and I…we’ve known eachother for a very long time, years, Audrey.”

“Wait,” I said as I checked my hotbar to make sure the ‘disruption’ spell was equipped. “You’re with the Standard of the Dain?!”

“Audrey,” She said with a slight smile. “I AM the Standard of the Dain. I formed the group years ago, during patch 7.1a. Listen, Audrey, this isn’t anything against you, but your guild has sitting on the Magelite stores for years and profiting off of everyone. The Standard of the Dain isn’t evil, we’re just going to level the playing field.”

“This is bullshit!” I shouted as she stepped onto the pedestal and began to play the song. Instantly, her body was surrounded by transparent, floating musical notes as the song reverberated through the massive chamber. “Stop, stop, stop! You’re going to change the loot tables, we won’t have the Zate armor anymore!”

“That’s right, Audrey,” She grinned. “It means you won’t be able to price gouge anymore, and everyone will stand a chance again. Look, I know change is hard sweetie, but the game is called ‘Dark Pantheon’ – eventually the Pantheon has to awaken. So it’ll be a little harder, and you’ll have to find a new way to develop your character, but is it really all bad? Change is a good thing, sweetie. Hey, I’ll be here to help you, I’ll help you figure out your stats and-“

“No!” I screamed as I rushed forward, aiming my staff at her. I quickly fired the disrupt ability, designed to interrupt her song and knock her back a good two feet, but it never landed. Somehow, even though her character was busy casting the song, another sprang forward from her lute and struck my character, sending me flying backward and reducing my health to fifty percent. What the hell? What kind of hit could do that?

“Audrey dear,” She said as the song commenced. “We’re in a perma-death zone, I don’t want to fight you. Use some common sense, you don’t want to lose your character. Listen, the change is going to be rough but you’re going to like yourself a LOT more. You won’t be relying on old equipment to protect you, you can move forward, you can make progress. Just lay there and let me do this.”

There was absolutely no way I was going to tell Mason or the rest of my guild that I had just sat here and let Tiffany reveal the horn’s location. Absolutely no way. I pressed X to bring my character to a standing position and cast a healing scroll on myself. I watched as an orb of green light fired into the air and exploded, sprinkling healing magic onto my avatar and filling my health bar. But it was too late. The song finished, and to my horror, a splash of text appeared at the top of my screen:

‘The Land is Silent for a Moment as Audri and GreyGirl Reveal the Location of the Horn of Schar’

“Jesus Christ, Tiffany!” I shrieked as my teleport spells lit up, once again becoming available. She must have noticed, she began to port out immediately.

“Listen, Audrey,” She said as her character began to fade out. “I meant everything I said. You can still call on me if you need me. I’ll help you. We’re enemies in the game, but this doesn’t carry over into real life.”

“I’m having a hard time accepting that,” I growled.

“Hey,” She said, smiling. “Once you’re out of the Tri Pi house, let’s go out to dinner somewhere, okay? Just as friends. Look, it’s been leading up to this for years. Remember when we fought on Mount. Barthatus? Or that time you ambushed me in the Mire of Resolve? We’ve been fighting for years hon, nothing’s changed.”

“I…okay,” I said, watching world chat as thousands of players cursed my name, having seen the notice. She was gone. Her character had faded out. I probably needed to get out of here too. As I hit the home button, I heard the door to the room open in real life. I turned away from the computer and saw Chisaki walk in accompanied by two other girls.

“Heya Audrey,” She said. “How are things going?”

“Um…” I swallowed a bit and glanced back at the screen briefly before looking back at her. “I think I just met my soulmate.”

Note: This side story takes place during Book 3

They all left me there. They seriously just piled out of the basement and left me on the floor. What the actual crap? I groaned and tried to pull myself into a sitting position only to be greeted by a sharp pain that shot through my right ankle. I yelped a little and fell back against the concrete floor. I had to get out of here, like now. I had barely gotten out of being punished for sneaking into the GAT house, I couldn’t imagine what would happen if Tri Pi caught me in their basement dressed like this. Whimpering, I placed my palm flat against the floor and struggled to push myself up. Against the extreme pain I finally managed to raise myself into a sitting position, but by now I saw shouting out in agony, not even trying to maintain my female voice.

Outside I could hear yelling, I think I heard Aleah scream once, and I swear to god there was someone out there with a megaphone. What the hell was happening? Was this really normal for sororities? If so, then like every movie I’d ever seen was right. The cellar door was still wide open, and I could see the night sky overhead, though by the time I finally managed to drag myself to the steps it had quieted down a lot. Okay, if I could just get to the top of the steps I could drag myself across the lawn. That would be easy enough, right? I shifted my body toward the stairs and finally managed to lay a hand on one of the concrete steps. They were pretty narrow but I could do this. I could definitely do this. I tried to push with my good foot, but as soon as my sprained ankle dragged across the ground, I screamed, and fell back to the ground.

“Come on, get up,” I muttered to myself, well, more like pleaded to myself. I absolutely couldn’t be caught down here.

“Hey,” A new voice spoke from across the room. “Are you Audrey?”

They were closing in on me, four girls, didn’t know who they were, didn’t matter. I had to get out of here. It was too late, they were on top of me, one, a brunette with glasses was kneeling beside me, her hand on my shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” I choked. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

I kept repeating it as if that would make this any better. They were going to find out who I was, they were going to report this to the school, oh my god I was going to get expelled, or arrested, or worse. I didn’t know what was going to happen.

“Audrey?” A different girl said from behind. “We need you to calm down, okay? Just take a deep breath, you’re safe here. Let’s get you upstairs.”

I complied numbly as two girls interlocked their arms beneath my shoulders and lifted me to my feet, the pain radiating through my ankle causing me to wince and cry out.

“You weren’t supposed to twist your ankle, silly,” The first girl said.

“You gotta stop beating yourself up like this,” Another girl joked from behind.

I didn’t find any of this funny. How did they know my name? How were they going to react when they figured out…what I really was? Nothing but the occasional moan escaped my lips as we crested the basement stairs and emerged into a baby pink hallway flanked with white-trimmed windows. Interior spotlights burned overhead, lighting our way to a pink themed living room. The two girls hold me lowered me gently onto one of two couches, this one faced a large flat screen television while the one on the opposite side of the room faced an inert fireplace framed by a white wood molding. They were going to figure me out, oh god they were going to figure me out. Should I just tell them right now? No, I needed to go, I needed to get out of here. Right now. The panic building within me was indescribable, I tried to push myself off the couch, but the displaced joint in my ankle screamed and sent a wave of sharp pain into my leg. I screamed and felt my eyes begin to water as I fell back onto the cushions and rolled onto my side.

“Audrey, honey?” The brunette laid a hand on my cheek and stared into my eyes, my lip quivered as I stared back. “You need to calm down, no one is going to hurt you here.”

“The yard is clear!” A new voice said from behind, I didn’t bother to lift my head and look. “Looks like they went running back to their van.”

“Audrey sprained her ankle,” The girl in front of me called out. “Can we get Marie in here to look at her?”

“Someone call me?” I heard someone shout from down the hall.

“Yah, Marie, get in here and fix Audrey!”

Moments later a taller girl was in front of me with her hands on my ankle. I winced as she ran her fingers up and down the bone, concentrating heavily on the injury.

“Hey Audrey,” She said, looking up at me for a second. “I’m Marie, I’m planning to go to medical school after Woodcrest, I volunteer at the hospital, so I promise you I can fix this. We just need to get a brace on here, okay?”

“O…okay,” I whimpered. “I’m sorry I’m so much trouble.”

“Don’t be sorry,” The girl with glasses told me reassuringly. “You’ve been through a lot, just let us help you.”

It was complete chaos, girls everywhere, talking, shouting, I couldn’t keep track of it all. My vision began to swim, but the pain was alleviated a little as Marie slid a brace onto my ankle.

“Hey we need to get this started, I have class in the morning!” I heard a male voice shout. I immediately froze; I knew that voice, it was Shawn Derringer, the president of DEM. I had a brief flashback to the day I’d rushed his fraternity and had been accepted. I hadn’t shown up the next day for orientation and Tiffany had literally forced me to call him and explain myself. I hadn’t give him a real explanation of course, just some bullshit excuse about how fraternity life wasn’t for me. Now he was here, did he know? Jesus, if he found out, who was he going to tell? I shrunk my shoulders and tried to make myself as small as possible, maybe he wouldn’t see me. No such luck, I saw him stroll around the front of the couch followed by two girls that I didn’t recognize.

“Hi, Audrey?” Shawn stared directly at me as the girl with the glasses took me by the shoulders and helped me to sit upright. “You probably remember me, I’m Shawn Derringer, president of DEM, this is Sakiya, president of Tri Pi and Willow, president of Omega Psi, we represent the Greek council at Woodcrest.”

I didn’t know what I was supposed to say to that, I really didn’t. Did they all know who…what I was? I dropped my eyes and mumbled some kind of response, no clue what it was, maybe they didn’t know either.

“Okay, so basically,” Sakiya said to me. “We’re here to ask you what’s going on with GAT and we want to know if you’ve been hurt in any way. I’ve spoken with Tiffany and she filled me in a little, but I really need to hear this from you.”

I noticed that the room had become uncharacteristically quiet, a quick look around revealed that all but these three had left the room, we were alone. Willow, Shawn, and Sakiya took seats and stared at me.

“Here’s the thing,” Shawn continued the dialogue. “We don’t want to call Panhellenic, as much as we take issue with the way GAT handles their business, a Panhellenic investigation would be bad for everyone. We do have other options, we could shun GAT from Greek events, we could stunt their ability to host parties, we could do any number of things. We could even call them out on their philanthropy hours, we all know they’ve been faking that. So, I guess what we need is for you to tell us if they’ve been hurting you, that would be the last straw.”

“Why…why am I important?” I frowned. “I’m just…”

“What we’re trying to figure out,” Willow interrupted me. “Is if GAT is torturing a transgender woman. To put it simply. Don’t worry, outside these walls your secret is safe. If you don’t want to come out then no one is going to force you to. In here we need to know what’s going on. How did this happen? Where did it start?”

“I…it….” I said nervously. I didn’t want to say it. God it was embarrassing. I could feel my cheeks turning red as I tried to work up the courage to speak.

“Audrey,” Sakiya stared directly at me. “If you can’t tell us anything new then we’re going to have to call Panhellenic. We can’t let GAT bring down the entire Greek system, it’s just not happening, so tell us something, anything,”

“Okay,” I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. “I…I broke into their house and tried on a dress…they…thought I was a rapist…or a robber or something and they tied me up but once they figured out I was trans they started helping me with makeup and…learning…to be a girl and…things…”

“So they’ve been helping you?” Willow raised an eyebrow. “That doesn’t sound like something GAT would do unless there was something in it for them.”

“Yeah I…I wouldn’t be…things would be a lot harder without them,” I choked out. “I really appreciate everything they’ve done.”

Did I really appreciate it? Hadn’t they done some screwed up things to me? Yeah probably but if GAT was disbanded then where could I go to be myself? Who would know my little secret? I would be all alone again, wouldn’t I? They weren’t all THAT bad, were they?”

“Okay,” Shawn said. “I have a very, very important question for you and I want you to think about this very carefully before you answer. Is GAT hazing their pledges?”

My mind raced back to a week ago when I’d been dragged into the GAT basement and bore witness to a line of terrified pledges forced to answer questions, and then showered with chocolate syrup when they’d misspoke. I remembered how terrified I’d felt, I remembered how badly I’d wanted out of there, but I also remembered how much I’d enjoyed being treated just like any other girl. Was it really a bad thing? Was it? I looked from Willow, to Sakiya, and back to Shawn.

“No,” I lied. “No they’ve…treated everyone really well.”

Shawn nodded.

“Alright,” He said. “That’s all I needed to know, I think we can hold off on calling Panhellenic but I also think you should stay away from GAT, I really, really do.”

“I second that,” Sakiya nodded. “If you need help you can always come here, we’ll help you with your makeup, we’ll do…whatever GAT was doing, seriously. It would be better for your mental health.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t stay away from them, they’re my…friends.”

“No,” Willow said softly. “They’re not.”

“You can stay here until your ankle heals up a bit,” Sakiya sighed. “Let’s…find you a room.”