LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 15 – Open Heart Surgery
“M-mom, you’re a Magical Girl?!” I yelled, shocked and surprised and in awe. Mom responded with confusion on her face, followed by looking down at her new ensemble.
“Okay what the fuck, what the actual fuck, how did this happen?” she asked nobody in particular; thankfully Potato Bun was there to answer.
“I -- I think your determination to protect the group was so powerful you awakened not just a Spark, but a downright Fire! I had no clue this could happen!” she answered, and then ducked away behind the bleachers while the Nightmare got back on its feet.
“That determined to feed your son’s delusions, are you? Aren’t you a medical professional? You know how experimental all the shit you’d put him on is!” it cried out, its speech garbled from the blood spilling from its mouth. Mom twirled her shotgun around in hand, empty shells flying out as she did so and new ones materialising in their place.
“Puberty blockers have been used since the eighties for kids that start puberty at seven.” Bang, she shot one of its eyes out, walking closer with each word. “The first trans woman to use HRT did so in the fifties.” Bang, right in the knee, forcing the Nightmare to kneel. “They affirmed trans women’s genders in Berlin up until the Nazis stormed the sexology institute and burned its library down.” She aimed her shotgun at the Nightmare’s head. “So kindly stop talking out of your ass, ma’am, and read a book.” The blast went right through the Nightmare’s head, and it fell on its back. Mom turned around and started walking back towards us. “I think that should shut it up for now.” With her shotgun resting on her shoulder, and her back turned towards it, she was unable to notice an important fact: The Nightmare wasn’t disappearing. The cells floating in the air coalesced around it, covering its wounded parts, morphing with it until it was all healed up. Then it laughed.
“Facts don’t care about your feelings, and the fact is your son can’t become a girl by chopping his dick off and taking pills.” The Nightmare rose like a vampire from its coffin, all eyes trained on us. “But I can bite it off for him anyways if he’s so desperate.” It was really trying to rattle me up, make me worry. What a dumbass, Fear of Being Outed tried that already. And it had failed spectacularly.
“Being a girl is more t-than just what’s in your pants, Karen.” The Nightmare hissed at my remark.
“Using slurs for me, what male aggression! A woman would never speak like that!” It held its wings over the hole in its chest in mock shock.
“Yeah, she would. Listen here, Karen, I can see thousands of ways this fight will go. Do you know what they share in common?” Aleah’s crystal ball was glowing; a glyph appeared underneath the Nightmare, a pale blue light aimed directly between its legs. “You shut up.” Ice fired from the glyph, freezing the Nightmare’s mouth shut. “Ellie? Non-Con Bondage. Clara? Unrequited Pinning. Blake, Daisy? Clip her wings!”
“Did you have to call the moves that?” Clara jumped to the bleachers, her spear ready, a green copy of her manifesting above the Nightmare, aimed so as to plunge at it. Ellie, in the meantime, fired a barrage of rope arrows past the Nightmare’s legs, the Nightmare laughed when none of them hit it.
“Missed your mark, you misguided soul trying at being a man.” The Nightmare stopped laughing when the ropes wound themselves around its legs, making it fall.
“Just. Buff. And. Butch. Fuck. You,” Ellie said, straining her voice that from the sound of it hadn’t been used in a while. As the Nightmare toppled down, Clara blinked to her prepared proxy, and plunged down, piercing the Nightmare through the middle of its chest. That was the signal for me and Blake to jump into the fray, taking a wing each, and slicing right through the skin, the eyes on the wings frantically looking around as they were cut off. But even after all that, the Nightmare didn’t start melting away; the wings reconnected to the arms, it broke from its bondage and shattered the ice over its mouth. We all jumped back as it leapt for the ceiling, hissing.
“Nice try, freakshow, but this isn’t going to go how it usually goes. Those dumb shits didn’t have a consistent power source. I have. As long as the video of you transforming is up, I can regenerate as much as I want to.” She leapt down, aiming for my mom, who ducked at the last second and used the butt of her shotgun to hit the Nightmare in the teeth.
“That so? Hey, Aleah, can you stream this?” Mom asked, shooting the Nightmare in the back, a question to which Aleah responded with a wicked grin.
“Yeah, fuck it, Horton already outed us as existing, might as well go to town on it.” Her phone was floating next to her shortly. “Hello, Ashhill High! This is Aleah Young speaking to you live from the school gymnasium, where a monster has manifested due to the rampant transphobia present at our fine school,” she began, earning the Nightmare’s attention. It leapt for her, but I intercepted it, knocking it off its path, letting Aleah continue in peace. “As you can see, this horrible creature is not special effects, but a real thing currently residing in a bubble of its own making around our school.” Blake opened a tear and swung at the Nightmare with their axe through it, getting a few of its eyes. “And myself, Clara Everest, Blake South, Ellie Metsänpeitto and DAISY Cloudton are trying to defeat it and rid the world of it, so that it doesn’t kill our classmates.” Aleah froze the Nightmare’s feet to the ground for a hot second, while I swung for it with my morningstar, earning a satisfying crunch as the ends of its legs broke off from the rest. “It nearly got the cheerleaders you see, and nobody wants to see our lovely cheer squad come to harm, do they?” Ellie shot out a couple of the Nightmare’s eyes in the meantime. “Doctor Cloudton,” Aleah pointed the camera at my mom, “what do you think is the best course of action for getting rid of it?” Mom turned to the camera, firing a couple quick shots at the Nightmare.
“Oh well that’s easy; it’s currently feeding on the transphobia thrown at my daughter, Daisy Cloudton. If most of the school decided to respect and recognize her gender, that should weaken it enough for us to land a finishing blow and get rid of it.” Mom jumped back as the Nightmare landed next to her.
“Well, there you have it, everyone. Grow a fucking heart, otherwise you’ll end up like this miserable creature.” Aleah focused her phone on the hole present in the Nightmare’s chest. “It’s not fucking hard.”
The Nightmare heartily laughed. “Oh you think a little speech will stop me, you dyke? Once I’m done with you lot, I’m taking out all the freaks at this school, all the sissies and the tomboys; this school will be a paradise of conformity or it will be filled with corpses!” it screeched, and jumped for Blake. “I’ll deal with this confused thing, trying to be a special snowflake, as well as the fucking queen of the trannies here in one fell swoop!” Blake swiped up as the Nightmare reached them, splitting its head in half. It wiped out on the ground, and stuck its head back together.
“N-No, you won’t. Your kind has tried to get rid of us for centuries. And your kind has always failed,” I said; I barely even noticed the wand changing shape once more, into one I was unfamiliar with. “Because you see, we’ve always been here. And we always will be. And there’s nothing you can do about that.” Something spoke to me, from my heart, just like when I had performed Heavenly Guillotine. The wand was a mic now. So that was my class. Fitting. I brought it to my lips, confidence surging through me like never before; a smile grew on my face, and my throat felt more stable than it had been in years. “I think you need some help.” I was singing, with the first lyric music started playing around me and an otherworldly wind moved my hair. “I think you need attention. You’re lashing out in pain, your heart’s clearly broken. You’re crying out. You’re begging. You’re on. Your. Knees. I know your needs. You need a little TRANSPLANT!”
With that last lyric, the light that had been blowing under me shot directly to my mom, engulfing her in an aura, and although I couldn’t see her mouth smiling, I could tell from her eyes that she was. She leapt into the air, and with a swipe of her hand pinned the Nightmare down with a set of scalpels. Scalpels which quickly transformed into leather cuffs, binding it down to the ground. A massive one manifested, opening the Nightmare’s chest up, showing the writhing mass of muscle mass inside. Mom pointed her shotgun down at the moment, the wings on her doctor’s coat glowing and emerging as a pair of actual wings keeping her in the air, and the snakes crawled down her arms to the shotgun. “Biopsy Turned Autopsy.” Bang! The sound of the shotgun blast echoed throughout the entire school, the snakes jumped from the shotgun onto the Nightmare and buried themselves in it, making it writhe in pain at last, the snakes bursting out at different points, tearing it into shreds. Once finished, they jumped back onto Mom’s arm and crawled up onto their proper spot, the back of her doctor’s coat. She landed on the ground softly, the wings flapping themselves into nothingness as the Nightmare, at last, began fizzing away, like bubbles in champagne. The flakes in the air all fluttered down the ground like flower petals, and the sound of tearing could be heard from the outside.
“We’re doing karaoke night to unwind after this and you’re not saying no,” Clara declared, and everyone began transforming back. That is, except for Mom.
“Hey, kids, how do I turn this off? You all had your buns tell you how, I didn’t get one because I volunteered and transformed by accident,” she asked, and Potato Bun flew up next to her, humming.
“Maybe something doctor related? Like ‘The surgery was a success’ or something?” she offered, earning a raised eyebrow from Mom.
“Alright, can’t hurt to try. Operation Successful, Patient Treated.” With those words, Mom’s outfit poofed back, but the shotgun stayed the same. “Guess we know what my catalyst is,, huh kids?”
The doors creaked open, and the cheerleaders stood behind them, looking in. “Is it over?” Mom immediately aimed at them.
“Only if you stop being transphobic shits about my daughter.”
“We promise!” the cheerleaders cried in unison, making their way back into the gym. “We still have practice to do, so…” the one I assumed to be their captain said, and so with a collective shrug the Magical Mostly Girls made their way outside.
Blake shivered as we stood outside, and spoke up. “I think I need a shower after that environment, get the plasma off of me.”
And after a collective “Same” we all went our separate ways, deciding to meet up that evening back at my place for karaoke night. What surprised me the most was that I didn’t feel like declining.