Fluff

Chapter Two - Don’t Panic

Emily decided, quite sensibly, not to panic.

The breeze shifting around her room settled and Emily shivered as the air stilled. She still sat on the edge of her bed, her hands folded on her lap and her breath coming in deep gulps.

Skill: Create Sister Successful!

Emily stared at the woman, no, the girl, standing before her where no one had been a minute before.

She was on the shorter side, with a squat figure and big chubby cheeks framed by brown hair that was cut off at neck-length. She would have placed her at thirteen or fourteen, with some growing left to do. She had a simple beige T-shirt with the word ‘Bear’ on it in big letters over a pair of green cargo shorts.

She looked, at least to Emily, like any other teenaged girl. That was, if the girl didn’t have a pair of rounded ears poking through her hair and a few words floating about her head.

??? Wright
WereBear, Level One

Emily looked away from the hovering words. The girl yawned. “What do you want me to do, Boss?”

“What?” Emily asked. She didn’t know why she was surprised by the girl talking. She should have expected it, really. “W-who are you?”

The girl blinked slowly. “I dunno. You haven’t named me yet.” She reached under her t-shirt and scratched at her tummy. “So, we're gonna do that?”

“Name you?” Emily asked.

It kind of made sense. She’d never been one for games and such, but she knew that naming pets was normal. But this was a girl, an actual human... maybe. People didn’t name other people, not unless they were naming a baby, and that was a comparison that Emily was really, really not ready to make.

The girl nodded. “Yeah. I mean, unless you’ve got something else that needs doing?” She looked around the empty room as if to confirm that there really wasn’t anything to do.

“I... how?” Emily asked. She shook her head a moment later. That was moving ahead too quickly. She had to figure things out. “Can I... unsummon you?”

“Nah,” the girl said.

Emily’s heart sank. “Oh. Okay. Um.”

“You okay Sis?” the girl asked.

“I’m fine,” Emily said faintly. It was her favourite lie, one that came easily to her lips.

“Alright, well, whatever.” The girl stepped up and Emily flinched, but she wasn’t attacked or hurt. The girl just climbed up onto the bed, shuffled around, and flopped onto her side in the middle of the bed.

“W-what are you doing?” Emily asked.

“Did you want me to scoot over?” the girl asked. She tapped the free space left on the bed. “There’s room. You’re not fat.”

“N-no, I mean. That’s my bed.”

“Got another bed?”

“No?” Emily said.

The girl shrugged one shoulder, pulled the pillow down lower, and smushed her face into it. “Wake me up when stuff’s happening.”

Emily’s hands danced uncertain gestures through the air. “Oh-okay?” she tried.

In the end, she did succeed in calming down. The girl on the bed next to her didn’t feel like a threat, or like someone dangerous. She was just a normal teenager that had appeared out of thin air and who had slid onto Emily’s bed.

She was pretty sure there weren’t guides for that kind of situation online, at least, none that wouldn’t get her added to a watchlist.

“Okay,” she whispered to herself.

She needed a list. A nice checklist, with things to do, and tasks that she could tackle in a reasonable and logical order.

Rushing over to her desk, she found a notebook in one of the drawers and placed it on the surface. Then she dug around for a pen that worked and got to making her list. It wasn’t a terribly long one, but she didn’t need a long list, she needed a functional one.

1. Learn about power.
2. Turn off sign above head.
3. Learn about bear-girl. Name her?
4. Find a place to hide bear-girl.
5. Go to classes on time.
6. Call mom.

Emily set her pen down, re-read her list, then chewed on her lower lip a bit. It... was a list. She could do those things. Turning, she found the bear-girl snoring on her bed, low rumbles that faded in the background as soon as Emily didn’t pay attention. She could almost pretend that there wasn’t a person in her room if it wasn’t for the words floating above her bed.

Step one was first. “Status?”

That seemed normal. No, not normal. None of it was normal. But it hadn’t changed from the last time she’d looked. “Um. Sister... page?” she tried. “Ah, maybe... bear...sister page?”

Emily took in the page. She... had no idea what that skill was supposed to do. Still, the fact that the girl had a status page that Emily could see meant something. She really was a product of Emily’s power. Not that that helped all that much, but it was a lead. Emily could Oogle that kind of thing.

She had learned something, so she tentatively crossed that off her list for the moment. She had a lot more to learn, but for now, other things were more important. “Um. Miss? Excuse me?” Emily asked. She reached out and shook the girl... the werebear’s shoulder.

Bleary brown eyes opened and looked up to Emily. “Yeah?” she asked before a yawn revealed large canines.

“Um. I have some questions.”

The girl sat up with a long-suffering sigh. “Okay.”

Emily licked her lips, then nodded. She could do this. A glance at her list to keep her mind on track helped. “Okay. So. First. Do you know how to hide... that?” she pointed above her head.

The bear-girl looked up and, presumably, at the name hovering over Emily’s head. “Yeah. Just turn it off. Why?”

“Uh. I, I can’t afford to let people know. They would... take me, and make me do things, and maybe they’d want me as a hero or something, and that’s a lot, and all I want is to go to school and maybe make one friend, or maybe two, and one day meet a nice quiet man and have a job that I can do really well on my own, but being a mask wouldn’t allow me to do any of that and--”

Emily cut herself off mid sentence as a pair of arms wrapped around her waist and a head pushed itself against her ribs. “You talk too much.”

Emily didn’t know what to do. The girl was lying all crooked across the bed and was hugging her with surprisingly strong arms that she doubted she could dislodge.

And then the girl let go and flopped back onto the bed. “There. Now you’re better.”

Emily wanted to protest, but hugs were sort of nice. She’d never had any friends, or special friends for that matter, but her mother was the hugging sort and Emily knew that they helped sometimes. “Thanks?” she asked.

“Yeah, sure,” the girl said.

Emily fidgeted for a moment. “Um. What about... Teddy?”

The girl blinked. “Teddy?”

“For a name? It could be short for, um, Theodora?”

The newly christened Teddy hummed, then nodded. “Yeah, okay.”

Emily reached for the girl, then thought better of it. The words above her head twitched for a moment then changed.

Teddy
WareBear, Level One

She felt something nice in her stomach, like when she finally arrived at home from school. It soon faded though as she looked at her list again. The words were, presumably, still hovering above her. “Menu?” She tried. “Um... disguise? Hide?”

Do You Wish To Hide Your Identity?

“Yes!”

A run back to the bathroom had her shoulders slumping as a whole heap of stress oozed off her back. The words above her head were gone. She could go one living a totally normal life. That was, if Teddy cooperated.

She would need to find something to do with the girl, but classes were coming up, and the roiling discomfort that being late brough to her was twisting in her gut already.

“Okay. Okay. Teddy?”

“Hrm?” came the response from the not-yet-snoring girl on the bed.

“I’m going to class. You, ah, behave?”

“Hrm.”

As Emily collected her things and tried hard not to think too hard, she had the impression that she was walking along the edge of a deep precipice. For a girl that knew that she had problems with sudden changes, all of the things happening to her in one day were just too much.

But she couldn’t see a way out of her situation, not one that didn’t pose all sorts of risks.

So, determined to make the most of her day and to pretend that her life wasn’t now a nightmare, Emily picked up her backpack full of books and headed for the door.

The moment her hand touched the handle a screen popped up before her.

You Have... 3 Pending Quests!