Inside-Outside-In

Zena

Before her girlfriend could vanish, Zena called her name, “Shae!”

She was too busy laughing and feeling ecstatic to notice.

“SHAE!”

She stood up. “Sorry, what is it?”

“I know you want to go back right this second, but there are a couple things we should take care of first.”

“Okay? What are they?”

She's not thinking clearly right now, though I don’t blame her for feeling so excited.

“Do you think it’s possible to teleport us all back to Marlonn? We don’t know how long you’ll be gone, and waiting around in the wilderness probably isn’t the best idea.”

They had only just a few days ago begun to traverse the mountain range that separated the Gortrand Empire and the Arvace Kingdom.

“Uh… I think so, yeah. Good call.”

“Okay, if you can do that, we should also find an inn. And then you can go.”

Shae gave her a quick peck. “Thank you.”

If Shae had left right now, that would mean leaving them behind in the wilderness, and if she came back to the wilderness with her level zero sister, it could be bad for her.

She could also go to Marlonn and spend time with her sister there, but that would still leave everyone else in the mountains without her. They also needed an inn so that Shae knew where everyone else was.

Shae called, “Okay, everyone, pack up. We’re going to Marlonn.”

A couple minutes later, all six of them were standing in a circle with everything stowed away. The carriage they had been on was already setting off without them, content with having already gotten paid for transporting the six people.

Shae activated her magic, and Zena’s vision shifted. Just like that, they were now standing not too far away from Marlonn's outer wall. In general, it wasn’t a good idea for space mages to just teleport into populated areas, which she had learned from Merrin.

Shae fell on her hands and knees, panting heavily.

Zena worriedly said, “Shae!? What happened!?”

“Just…” She breathed. “Just spent a ton of mana all at once.”

“Are you in burnout?”

Burnout was when someone spent all their mana and used their health and mana to compensate for continuing to cast spells after their mana was spent. It placed an immense burden on the body.

She checked her Status. “No. My mana’s low, but not fully drained.”

Zena breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s good. We should’ve been more careful.”

She nodded, still breathing heavily. “That’s on me. I didn’t think about what it would cost to move everyone.”

After catching her breath, they entered their home city for the first time in over two months.

It feels even longer than that. Gortrand was a miserable place.

After finding a place to stay, Shae was too spent to teleport again tonight. She wasn’t happy about that, but it at least allowed her a little time to think about how she wanted to handle the reunion.

She left the inn to buy her sister a gift and to send a letter to Elna. It was possible that it would be months before she finally received it, but she was with Merrin, who was a space mage, so they could instantly get here once they were done with whatever they were doing.

Broch asked Zena, “You’re not worried she’ll stay in her world?”

She smiled and shook her head. “This is her world now. She’s only going back to make sure her sister is okay, but she isn’t going to live there anymore.”

 

———

 

Shae

She awoke early the next morning, far too excited to remain asleep. Zena was laying beside her, snoring softly. Shae got dressed, then gently shook her.

“Shae?” Zena said.

“Hey, I’m leaving now.”

Zena pulled her into a deep kiss. “Okay, you can go now. I’ll see you soon.”

Shae giggled. “Yeah. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Shae looked at herself one last time before teleporting. She was wearing ordinary clothes; just a plain white shirt and black pants. Had she teleported last night, she would’ve shown up in her armor, which could’ve caused some issues.

She had also bought Victoria a gift, as both a very late 17th birthday present and an apology. Finally, she grabbed her car keys from the bottom of her bag, where she had nearly forgotten they existed. They might help a little bit in convincing her sister of who she is.

She concentrated, picturing Victoria’s bedroom. She focused on the corner of the room, which would be hidden behind the door if it was open. That way, their parents wouldn’t see her if they were in there bothering Victoria. They often just walked right and began telling her what to do.

She willed herself through her magic, and the scenery changed. Gone was the cozy little room in the inn, and in its place was her sister’s bedroom. It had previously been decorated with various posters and other things she liked, but was now bare and utilitarian.

What happened here? There aren't even any drawing supplies…

The desk remained, however, and sitting in the chair was her sister, watching a speedrun from what Shae could tell.

“Vicky,” Shae said, trying not to tear up.

Victoria jumped out of her chair. “Wh-What!? Who are you?! Where did you hear that name?!”

Shae glanced nervously at the door, but didn’t hear her parents coming up. She could certainly hear the yelling and the conservative news station blasting at max volume, though. The bad memories were already resurfacing.

She held up her necklace and car keys. “Uh, your brother sent me?”

Victoria looked at the items in her hands and recognized them. “He’s alive? Where is he? What happened to him?” she demanded.

“I… Um… Well… Fuck it. I died and was reincarnated as a girl in another world.” She activated her [Mental] sub-skill for emphasis, and continued, “I gained magic, and I’ve been working my ass off so I could finally come back here.”

Inaccurate, but relatively true.

“What…? You… Your eyes…”

Shae pulled out the gift she had bought and unwrapped it. “Uh, it’s a green top to go with the skirt you got on the day I vanished?”

Victoria was silent for a long time. “…Shay?”

“Yeah, sis. It’s me.” The tears were falling now.

 

———

 

Victoria

There’s just no way…

She approached the tall and deadly-looking woman standing in the middle of her room.

“Is it really you?”

The woman nodded shakily. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s me.”

“Show me a spell. I saw your eyes glow, but…”

She looked around the room. Then the pillow levitated off the bed and into Victoria’s hands.

It really is magic… And the keys and sigil, my name, how they acted just now… It really is Shay!

Victoria hugged the woman, who hugged her back. “I missed you so much, Shay!”

“Yeah, me too, V.”

“What happened to you, Shay?”

They sat down on the bed, and Shay, or Shae, recounted her journey from the parking lot she vanished from to this very bedroom. She clearly had a lot of things happen, and trimmed it down to the relevant parts for now.

“Shae, I have literally had nightmares about someone forcibly changing my gender.” Victoria’s eyes glanced in the direction of the loud TV in the house.

Shae replied, “Yeah, it was really messed up. But I had been wanting for a long time to understand what you were going through, so magic may have granted that wish.
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“Dysphoria… That was just the worst fucking shit.”

Victoria nodded, then asked seriously, “So, if I get magic, will I turn into a girl?”

“I don’t think that’s something that would happen, but it might be possible. No, you would probably need to get a flesh mage to transform your body. Either that or have flesh magic yourself.”

“I’ll learn that, then. Is it hard?”

Shae sighed. “While magic does apparently give you something you either want or need, you can’t just request it to give you something specific. At least for the first Skill, what you get is what you get.”

“Wait, Skill?”

“Yeah, like a game.”

“…Are you shitting me?”

“I’m not! Really! I’ve got stats and everything.”

“How does that make sense?”

“I asked the same question. It’s easier if you think of magic as a living thing, sort of like a plant. Plants emit oxygen, which we breath, and we exhale carbon dioxide, and then plants absorb it or something.
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“Anyway, magic is like a symbiotic creature, and when you cast a spell, a sort of waste energy is given off, which is absorbed and turned into ambient mana, which can then turn into spells again.
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“To make it easier to use, magic has integrated numbers and explanations for things into how it works. It’s evolved over time, too. There are ancient records of a much simpler version of the current System. The spells people could use back then were the same, but their understanding of them was much less in-depth.”

“How do you know that?”

She shrugged. “I learned it in mercenary school.”

“What.”

That required another explanation.

“Okay, so it’s an Adventurer’s Guild. Got it.”

She blinked. “Oh, right. Now I remember. I guess that is sort of accurate.”

“They usually also have to kill people sometimes in those stories. Does that happen?”

Her face became solemn. “Yes.”

Something must’ve happened. But I have to ask.

“You’ve… killed people, Shae?”

She nodded slowly. “I have.”

After explaining what she had done and why, Victoria replied, “It sounds like they were bad people.”

“They were, but does that justify killing them? To many people, the answer is a resounding ‘yes’.” She sighed. “I even agree with them and think they deserved it. That doesn’t mean I’m happy about what I did, though.”

Victoria hugged her. “I don’t think any less of you for it. You clearly still care about people, and you’re doing what you think is right.”

She smiled slightly. “Thanks, sis.”

It’s been so long since I got to have a conversation with her.

Victoria asked, “You said you’re okay with your body now, but what about pronouns? You don’t have to stick with feminine ones.”

She shrugged. “I literally do not care. People use feminine ones for me based on my appearance, and that’s fine with me.
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“When I was still new to Tamyre, the magic hadn’t fully taken effect yet, so I told everyone I was a man. The villagers and the old lady who let me live with her switched pronouns at my request without any hesitation whatsoever.
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“And several months later, when I moved to Marlonn, I was already halfway adapted, so I decided not to correct people. And now it’s fine.”

“So people there know about trans people and are just casual about it?”

“Yep! Same with gay people, too.”

“It sounds like paradise.”

“It is. I want to bring you there, you know? I didn’t come here just to say hi. It’s a great place, and I consider it home now.
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“But you have to keep in mind,” she started seriously. “If you come, you will likely never be able to return.”

Shae then explained how space magic was rare and that even hiring a space mage wouldn’t work because they can only teleport to places they’d been to before.

And how nearly every single person has some sort of part of their body that has permanently changed; something not even flesh magic can alter. But also that few people ever have problems with these changes.

Victoria looked at her computer monitor. The only people in the whole world she cared about were online. After Shae vanished, she became depressed. And after angering her parents by not being the silent and obedient child they wanted, they threw out nearly all her things, and she became even more depressed.

She had lost some friends along the way. She still talked with some, but Shae had been her lifeline to help her endure reality until she turned 18 and could get the fuck away. Without Shae, she had fallen apart, and many aspects of her life had suffered.

Turning back to her sister, Victoria told her, “I’ll go. I can’t stay here anymore. I’m done.”

Shae smiled. “We can go right now.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

Victoria stood up. “Let’s go.”

“You don’t want to say goodbye to anyone?” she asked, glancing at the monitor.

She shook her head. “I’ve grown apart from them. We still talk sometimes, but… it feels more like we’re distant acquaintances now rather than friends.”

“I see. You should pack a bag full of clothes. I don’t have a whole wardrobe ready for you. Other than that… Yeah, there isn’t anything else I would say you need from here.
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“We’ll get you new clothes soon, though. I know you hate that stuff. What happened to your things that had been in my apartment, by the way?”

“They assumed a girlfriend left them and threw them out,” Victoria grumbled.

“That sucks.”

Once Victoria had a bag packed, she excitedly told Shae, “Okay, now let’s go.”

“Yes. But first…” She smiled maliciously and glanced at the bedroom door, which was still failing to contain the noise. “A parting gift for them. One they won’t understand.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

Shae opened the door, letting the hate in. She held her car keys in her hand, glanced at them, then at the TV in the living room which was visible from this angle. The backs of their parent’s heads could also be seen. They were both ranting at each other about people they hated at an even louder volume than the TV was.

Shae lifted her arm, and with an impossibly-fast motion, whipped the keys at the TV at an equally-impossible speed, going straight through it and embedding into the wall behind it. The TV stopped working, the parents screamed, and the number of people in the house dropped from four to two before the parents had any idea what had happened.

The world suddenly shifted around Victoria, going from a deafening house she hated to a wooden, carpeted room with a bed. It was blessedly silent, other than what sounded like running water somewhere.

A spear was leaning in the corner and there were two sets of armor laid out, partially on the floor and partially on a table.

“Holy shit, Shae!” Victoria laughed, feeling glee and catharsis at Shae’s actions, and excitement for the beginning of a new, magical life with her sister.

Shae laughed with her.

A door in the room opened, and a naked woman with vertical pupils and a prosthetic leg stepped out, having apparently just finished taking a shower. A long, forked tongue flicked from her mouth.

Victoria froze, while the woman looked at her with curiosity.

The woman turned her head to Shae and said something in a language Victoria had never heard before, and Shae replied in that same language. The mysterious snakelike woman chuckled and went back into the bathroom after grabbing some clothes.

Coming back to reality, Victoria asked, “Shae, what just happened?! Who was that hot and scary lady?! Why was she naked?!”

Chuckling, Shae explained, “That was Zena, my girlfriend.”

“What!?”