Chapter 3: Chapter 3

The moments from falling into my apartment to exiting the shower to munching on buttered toast happened in the saddest of montages. 

Now in my boxers and t-shirt, I flicked on the TV, which sat below a long framed painting of red flames twirling like lightning—I decided to throw that away first thing in the morning.

On either side of the TV were long potted plants, and a Turkish rug lay before my feet. 

Flicking through some anime, I found I couldn't be bothered to commit to an episode of anything. Even twenty minutes felt like an eternity. 

So instead, I picked myself up and took myself to bed, grabbing the laptop on the other pillow and pushing it open. 

Curiosity—probably the politest word I could've used—had me searching up Misty’s shop. 

Misty's Magical Menagerie, owned by a moody...something M. 

Miscreant? 

Malcontented...

Whatever.

The website was filled with junk and advert banners sure to give my computer chlamydia if I clicked on them. It was hella outdated, too, with dead links and some sending you in circles. 

What was so complicated about having simple links on a bar across the top? 

I guess she had to be vintage in all things, or perhaps she was just a clueless mage that didn't really understand how normie stuff worked, like an easily browsable store website. 

Her flier didn't even say 'vintage' video games. It just said video games. That’s a different market. 

Had she not figured it out when, say, a kid came in asking for the new COD?

‘We don’t have COD,’ I imagined her replying, ‘but we do have Sega Bass Fishing for the Dreamcast. It comes with the rod controller! 5 gazillion dollars, please.’

Then I laughed at myself. Kids didn’t play COD anymore. It's that other shooter now. Twice Monthly, or whatever it was called.

Something intriguing caught my eye just as I was about to click off the screen.

In bright garish pink to offset the black, it read, As Seen on Youtube. 

I clicked it and found a host of her videos, where she reviewed different games and old tech. They weren’t exactly viral, but some of them had nearly five thousand views. Not bad.

I clicked on one.

"Hey guys!" she said brightly, yet I couldn't help but feel it was fake happiness after meeting the real her. "I've got something great for you tonight. The power glove! I'm sure you've seen people review this marvelous hunk o’ junk before, but have you seen someone use it to play guitar hero for the PS2?"

"Bullshit," I said. "You can't hook that thing up to a PS2."

Miraculously, she had managed it. I assumed magic at first, but then she explained the series of adapters needed to make it work.

I was impressed, but not by the video quality. It was hella fuzzy, and the audio was echoey too, and not mixed properly at all. So quiet.

I started rattling off what Misty could do to improve her production quality. 

Better lighting, or even any kind of lighting. Couldn't she have made a lightning bolt somewhere in the room? I suppose that would make her look crazy, all flickering and sparking everywhere like a plasma ball.

I shook my head, then burst out laughing at a sudden realization.

While I was an Unchosen normie obsessed with magic, she was a mage obsessed with Unchosen video games!

The grass is always greener, I thought. 

I clicked the next video, watching her explain why TMNT on the NES was a good game, actually.

Her titles and thumbnails could have been better too. 

I hated the whole concept of clickbait, but she could’ve made more of an effort to be eye-catching. It was just freeze-frames from the video taken at the worst times. 

One of them showed right up her nostrils at the most unflattering angle.

I shook my head, wondering if watching her Youtube channel was super weird. I mean, she put it on the internet...but...

Yeah. Bit weird, I decided. 

I needed to clear my head.

So, instead of doing that, I started wondering if I would've had a chance with her had I not asked about getting tested for magic.

I had done pretty well in bringing up her favorite band. It was a gamble that paid off. I judged her to be one of those modern fashionable goths, not the old kind that listens to screamy music.

But what would I have done down the line? Keep up the charade that I liked her favorite band? 

I laughed. 

Maybe I was a pickup artist. After all, I was BS-ing her to get something I wanted.

Whatever.

And then I thought it was getting a bit obsessive, still thinking about this girl who had nearly blown my face off with a ball of lightning. 

While I didn't exactly like docile women—someone feisty that could keep me on my toes was great—Misty was a bit too much…

"Porn!" I said aloud suddenly. "That's what I need to clear my mind."

It should've been the first thing I did. I opened a new browser and put in the website, looking at the endless thumbnails. 

None of it seemed appealing.

When I clicked on one, I skipped to the middle to see this gorgeous naked woman on all fours. Her juicy tits fell down and gently swung hypnotically as she crawled toward the camera.

I felt nothing, so I smashed the spacebar with far too much force to pause the video, pushed the laptop away, and closed my eyes for a moment, trying to, I don’t know, calm myself? I felt pretty calm.

I tried to figure out what was wrong with me.

Have you got all day?

 

***

 

I had some funny dreams. 

First, I was in pitch black, not floating as such, nor was I standing. I was just...there. Then a book appeared in the distance, completely out of reach.

If I were to muse on it later, I wouldn't have to be a genius to psychoanalyze what that dream meant. 

Next up, the hot woman with the big breasts, crawling on her knees towards my monster cock. Good dream.

But her hair turned ebony black, her eyes; gorgeously reflective, showing myself in them, as well as some wild colors of pink and yellow.

Misty’s breasts were a bit smaller than the pornstar, and she had that slightly pudgy belly where, even though she was skinny, she didn't hit the gym. It was so damn cute, I just wanted to put my hands on it and hold it close from behind while I thrust behind her, and she yelled my—

"Owe," I said, frowning.

It happened again. A finger prodded my head painfully. The nails were a bit long, digging into the skin. It hurt. 

I opened my eyes and tried to sit up, fully aware that I had a raging hard-on while...there was a weight on my legs, I wanted to move them, but she was...

"What, the fuck!" I cried.

There she was.

Misty wore a black hoodie to go with her black jean shorty-shorts, and she wore long black leggings too, which cut off quite high at the thigh. Her black Converse shoes were on my bed.

That was the least of my worries, though.

"I said," she yelled, "are you some kind of pervert!"

I looked down at my cock-tent, now softening at a record pace.

I tried to cover myself up like an embarrassed maiden. "You broke into my house!" I felt rather emasculated.

"You were fetish-fantasizing about me!" Misty spat, getting closer. 

There was a wildness in her eyes. I wished they weren't so reflective. I could see my own fear looking back at me.

"I wasn't..."

She picked up the laptop and shoved it on my lap, making me lurch forward and try to ignore the pain she had just caused to my cock.

"Look!" she demanded. "You were watching my videos, and got a weird hard-on and went to look at porn to finish the job!" 

"One minute," I held up a finger while the punch-to-the-gut feeling began to grow below my navel. 

"I just knew it!"

"I'm..." I took a larger breath, finding it hard to breathe out. "I'm pretty sure breaking into someone's apartment is way worse than looking up someone's Youtube channel—which was fully advertised on your website, by the way."

"That's not what I—"

I snatched the laptop and pulled up the porn website, feeling equally embarrassed and angry. "Look at the search bar," I said. "Does it say I was looking up ‘moody goth bitch with freakish eyes’?"

Freakishly beautiful eyes, I added mentally.

"And..." I gathered my thoughts. "You obsessed so much over our interaction that you broke into my apartment. All I did was look up your website. Who's in the wrong here, really?"

She blinked and moved back, looking down at the bed she was sitting on.

"This is pretty messed up," I continued. "Breaking into my apartment, sitting on my bed while I'm asleep, and looking through my laptop. Fuck, I should call..."

"No, don't," she said, oddly calm.

I noticed her hair was now plaited into two separate plaits as they rested on her black Nirvana hoodie. 

She looked away for a moment and said, "You can get dressed if you need to, then we can talk."

"About what?" I demanded, swinging my legs off the bed and giving her the side-eye to check she wasn't peeking. I only wore boxers and a t-shirt, and my cock had damn near retreated all the way into my body from fright.

"Testing you, obviously!"

I knew I heard the words as they reverberated in my empty brain while I rummaged through the dresser for some pants. 

Finally, I found some, slipped them on, then stood over her while she just sat on the edge of my bed, staring at me.

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"If you must know, I never got round to jacking off," I said, wondering why I would even say such a thing. "I wasn't even feeling it, and I was only going to do it to clear my mind anyway. It wasn't about you. Well, it was…but not—"

"Did you not hear what I said?"

"Yeah, I did," I said. "Just trying to process it still."

"Because," she flicked one of her plaits behind her back, "I got home and thought how sad you looked when I rejected you twice."

"Twice?"

"Yeah, first for hitting on me, and then secondly for the magic."

"You didn't—whatever. I don't care." Then my heart started pumping fast. The words had finally caught up with me. "Did you mean it?" 

"Yeah," she said. "I have a boyfriend. Many boyfriends. A thousand boyfriends and you will never be one of them."

"Don’t be facetious."

"Right. Well, buddy, do you know how much trouble we can get in? I thought it would be better to do it here secretly."

"As opposed to secretly at the shop?"

"We could wait until tomorrow then?" she asked.

"No, no, let's do it!" I sat back down on the bed. "How did you break into my house anyway?"

"Your guys’ locks are a piece of piss," she said. 

"Always a way with words," I replied.

Misty flared sparks in her hand, illuminating the room. One stray spark left the ball, then another, and almost like two fingers, they adeptly brushed against each other—fingers, or lockpicks.

 It was...awesome, if a bit freaky.

"How can you push things with lightning?" I asked. "It’s not even solid. Did you break my door?"

"Don't worry. I make an uber-powerful little spark that sends the pins harmlessly rocking backward. It’s pretty badass."

"Right, so, how does this work," I asked, "the testing?"

"Right, right, yeah." Misty rummaged in her hoodie pocket, pulled out a ring, then held her fingers to my forehead and sparked lightning.

I suddenly thought that Misty could be in cahoots with the police women-slash-secret agent-slash-whatever she was, and she was completing her failed task of brain-zapping me.

"That's not right," she said. "Hmm."

She looked at the ring and showed it to me. 

The gem was all cloudy.

"I don't see anything," I said.

"No, you see clouds," she said. "if you didn't see anything, then that'd be a clear sign you’re an Unchosen."

"Wait...are you saying…"

"I'm not saying that," she said. "I'm saying it's cloudy, so I can't see what you are."

'I'm a..." 

"It doesn't mean that! It means someone fucked with your brain!"

"Don't yell. I have neighbors." Even as I said the words, I didn't care. 

"Hang on a minute," she said and put her fingers to my head again. That pink lighting spurred out, and I felt stabbing heat on the skin of my forehead, then it seemed to go through it, to the bone, and a sudden intake of the wildest cutting pain I ever knew.

It all went black.

 

***

 

"Wake up, dickhead," she said, shaking me. 

I opened my eyes, and a searing headache had purple spots blinking across my eyes like I'd been staring all day at a lightbulb, but the room was dark.

And The Grudge in pigtails stared down at me. "I didn't zap you that badly," she said. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine, I think." I sat up. "What happened?"

"I can give you my theory. That's it."

"Okay, fine, theory. Go." I rubbed my forehead.

"Someone put a very faint ward over your brain, coating it like a warm blanket, keeping you all soft and innocent. Poor baby."

"Stop with the mocking, and just tell me what it is."

"It was so faint. Even though it’s faith magic and I’m chaos, I could still override it."

I said nothing. Misty hadn’t finished explaining, so until she did, I stared daggers at her. 

She continued, "In case you hadn’t figured it out yet, they did it to hide your magic."

"Why?" I asked.

"How the hell should I know? What I do know is your magic is so pathetically weak that I could override the ward needed to cover it, despite my disadvantage to magic of the faith." She shook her head. "It was such a weak ward, for such a weak magic, I may as well not have bothered."

"Oh right, well, thanks."

I didn’t care that it was weak, not one bit. Because the words kept spinning around my mind.

I had magic.

I pulled my hand up, flexing my fingers upwards, seeing if I could—

"I wouldn’t bother. You couldn’t even bring up water to confuse for sweat," she said. "Assuming that’s what kind of magi you are."

"Can’t you figure out what kind I am?"

Misty shook her head, climbed off my bed, and said, "See ya!" as she hopped off to the doorway. 

The hoodie had ridden above her belt, revealing her pale lower back. Her black jean shorty-shorts hugged her ass so damn tight it revealed all its bubble curves.

"Wait, where are you going?" I asked, running to the hallway.

"I don’t want to interrupt your jack-off session any longer." 

"But you need to—"

"I don’t need to do anything, buddy. First, I tested you, and then I went above and beyond in getting rid of that ward. That's more than I signed up for. Who knows who I pissed off by breaking it." She prodded my chest painfully and said, "Anyway, you can do baby magic now, probably. You’re welcome, by the way."

As Misty walked down the hall and opened the front door, I ran to it, where she took a step back from me and hit her back against the door, causing a crash. She looked horrified, perhaps wondering if I was going to try and kiss her.

"What?" She scowled at me.

I paused, feeling frozen in place. Then I frowned and asked, "Why did you help me?"

She turned her lips to appear as if she was in thought, but I didn’t buy it. 

Then, she stared so hard into my eyes that she went through them into my soul.

And she said with vicious, sultry venom, "Fuck the academy."

 

***

 

Okay, that was actually pretty badass."

"Less so if you comment on it after," Misty replied, still standing there, raising her eyebrows at me.

"Even less so if you don’t walk away after saying it," I said, glancing at her black-lipsticked lips. They had begun to chap, only slightly. 

"Oh, so you want me to go?" She put her hands on her hips.

"No, I mean—"

She yelled loudly for all my neighbors to hear, "I’m not gonna suck your dick, buddy! Besides, you’ve probably got a baby dick to go with your baby magic."

"Alright, get out," I said, pushing her out the door.

She laughed but didn’t seem to mind my hand on her back.

"Oh, and," I added, "Fuck you, but also thank you."

Misty smiled, seeming to enjoy the complisult. Then she got closer and whispered, "If you tell a soul…" Sparks flared in her hand. 

"Not a soul," I whispered. "I’ll say I found some black market guy in an alleyway."

"Good boy," she said, giving me a dirty glare as she left.

After I shut the front door, I went to my window to spot her walking down the street, illuminated by the orange street lights. 

They seemed so bright now.

The laces to Misty’s Converse were long and half done-up, dragging on the sidewalk, sliding over puddles. 

I looked back to my bed, spotting all the rain and footprints she had gotten on my covers. 

I smiled. 

And when I turned back to the window, she had disappeared into the night like a bitchy Batman. 

Would that make me Robin? 

Screw you, Misty.

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