I'm in school, and the stress is getting to me. I get this vibe that people are eyeing my horns and especially my tail. I know I don't have a tail, but there's this nagging feeling, perhaps because of those budding wing stubs on my back. Thankfully, Constance, my seatmate, radiates such a soothing aura that it helps calm me down. She's an absolute gem; I can't believe my luck in having her as my seatmate!

I've got to figure out a solution for the horns. They're tiny, around 1 cm long, but if anyone caught a glimpse, I'd be fucked—labeled as a freak, with who knows what consequences. The illusion I use to hide them has its limits; a touch could give it away. Even being too close might be risky, as the illusion could become too apparent.

Sure, I can avoid being touched, but the think is stressing me out.

My wounds are almost healed; there's still some hardened skin visible, but not much. I'll make that disappear in a couple of days. Flo keeps reassuring me that nobody can see my little horns, but I still feel uneasy when someone looks at me, especially the teachers.

So much for no negative consequences if we integrate more! It can't be undone; we have to separate to reverse it. Why didn't I think to ask this before?

Cala is getting restless and would prefer to do something else. I'm dreading the upcoming sports hour.

During the first break, I overheard the girls. Nothing interesting was said, just some mindless chatter about who did what and who was wearing what. They seem obsessed with these superficial things—how people look and act, not what they say, but how they appear while doing it. It's hard to believe that just a couple of weeks ago, I might have found this kind of nonsense interesting.

Bounty County is not discussed. Yeah, it is already a week old; the county is still inaccessible due to that chemical spill. What spill? Nobody knows exactly, but there are many versions. It was said it can take a long to clean it up. How long? Again nobody knows. Why is the army around? To catch the saboteurs. Nothing new to talk about it.

How can the press get things so wrongly? I happened to be at that meeting, where a police officer told the audience something completely different at three o'clock in the morning. Where do they collect the info for their stories? Where is the truth? Could those police guys be so wrong?

During our next break, I chatted with Constance. I wanted to get from her the last gossip. Yeah, I just said I am above that, but I wanted to hear what people were talking about me. I’ve been with Joe at that party, there was that incident with the warlock, and I left with Matt, so I wanted to hear what were people talking about it.

To my pleasant surprise, the fact that I left with Matt remained mostly unreported. Was I still interested in Joe? Yeah, you could bet the farm I was.

I haven’t seen him yet. He is in a parallel class, and I should get out of the classroom to meet him. Maybe later? I was a bit afraid to do that.

Matt gave me a couple of glances, but he came to chat with me and Constance only during the third break. He needed that long to gather the courage? Or maybe he didn’t want to disturb? Whatever.

We chatted about many things and ended up talking about music. He seems to be a big music fan, and they both found a completely unknown to me artist to talk about. That was about it before the next hour came and then we went for sports.

Interesting, I was not feeling as hostile toward him as before. There was some hostility from Dolores, who had only Joe in her mind. As Cala, I saw him with neutral eyes. A bit disdain as he is so weak and untrained, but this is how most people here seem to be, but I was not hostile. Only Flo sent some sympathy vibes. For whatever reason, my little fairy side seems to have a crush on him. Difficult to reconcile all these feelings.

Hey, am I thinking now as Cala?... Fuck. I am Cala, but I can switch back to Dolores. Only she is so weak and ...

So gym now. At least here I can have some fun. I know I should not exaggerate, I do not want to get too much attention, but some fun is allowed, isn't it?

I knew Cala's body from the time when I played her, but this was different. This was real life. The feeling of having suddenly powered up my body was amazing. I knew I was an entirely different class much above all these around me. Eventually Superman could be a spare partner, but he was a fictional character while I was real and there is no better place to feel it than in the gym hours.

We started with some warm-ups. Well, I didn't even sweat. When I do push-ups, I should do them with one hand, not two? Same with pull-ups. Ow, there is a gym bar there. I'll visit that later!

Galia, our gym teacher, had the brilliant idea to put us to play handball. Being the trainer of the school's handball team, she was probably looking for potential replacements for the current players who are now in their last school year.

Three girls, Lena, June and Sarah, were in the school's team, and of course, when they chose the teams, they chose each other. Galia should not have allowed that, but she ignored it, so I found myself on the opposite team with Constance and several others like Julie, who some called fatty-Julie and Helen, who was almost as tall as me but very thin, the typical anorexic girl. You were afraid to throw the ball to her, not to hit her.

Well, soon, we were led 7-1, the one goal that Theresa shot almost through an accident at the beginning. But she was now sitting on the bench with a slight injury after a collision with Doria. That was mostly my role. I mean, sitting on the bench faking an injury, that's what Dolores would do. Theresa did not fake it.

Doria did not make it to the main school team, but she was close. She was a little too corpulent and not fast enough to be in the main team, but she was strong and had good reflexes and was thus mostly playing defence.

I had no intention of showing off; I had my fun with the game and was not interested in shooting goals, so most of the time, I only played the ball to the others, trying to help them and motivate them. It was like watching toddlers. Both teams were slow and weak, only my team was even weaker and incredibly slow.

The problem was that they were too fast countered. I got angry when Doria hit Constance. Milena, our goalkeeper, threw the ball towards Helen, our anorexic girl, who, of course, missed it but touched it just enough to change its trajectory. Constance ran to catch the ball, and Doria bodychecked her, swinging the little Constance against the wood bench 1 meter away from the line. It was almost comical to see the fragile girl literally flying as if after hitting a giant rubber balloon.

I saw how one of Constance’s fingers bent in the wrong direction, and I ran to her. Even before she managed to stand, I was there and healed her and I did not even strain me or force me to run particularly fast. Luckily it was a small heal, I was in movement, and sunlight came through the upper windows, all making it difficult to see the flicker of my healing light. She was confused and hurt for being thrown like this, and I helped her stand. She looked at me, then at her finger, and thanked me for helping her.

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Galia came there too to inquire if she was ok and admonished Doria.

Helen was asked to execute the penalty for the fault. She threw the ball feebly at me. She had hesitated a lot to throw the ball, and only once I came closer did she let it come my way. Lena tried to grab it, but I snatched it, made a fast pivot on one foot and instead of passing the ball further, I shot directly to their gate as I saw their gatekeeper standing a bit away. The ball flew like a cannonball at about 10-15 cm above the ground, touched the ground once and, due to the spin, curved directly into the goal behind Tina, their goalkeeper.

I was starting to get the gist of it. Throwing curved balls is fun.

Well, now Doria was given the task to 'control' me. They started again from the centre. I had no intention to continue playing seriously, but interesting enough, 'my' girls started playing more serious, even if it was only two to seven. I thought it would be instantly two to eight, but Milena saved miraculously, and fatty-Julie, pardon, Julie, captured the ball and threw it to me. It was a nice long ball she threw, and I was feeling guilty not to use it, so I did one feint, sending Doria running in the wrong direction, and I jumped high, higher than June and Sarah, who were trying to block me and threw the ball between Tina's legs into the goal.

They argued with Tina, but that was unfair. She could not have blocked it; it was too fast for her.

And just like that, it was three to seven.

Of course I was not using all my power. Like when you want to push toddlers to their limits, I was just using a little more power, moving a little faster than them. It was strangely both fun and satisfying.

Lena started again from the middle with a pass to June on the right side, who then wanted to pass it to Sarah. It was one of their exercised manoeuvres that I started to recognize, so I expected the ball behind Sarah, captured it and went for the goal.

Doria came like a bulldozer my way with Ann and Sogi behind. I made one sudden change of direction. A desperate Doria caught my blouse, but I only pushed harder. She tore my blouse on one shoulder, unveiling my bikini top partly, but I ignored it, jumped between Ann and Sogi and marked the next goal. Galia correctly recognized it even if it was a fault before.

So good that Flo had additionally camouflaged my emerging wings, which kept close to my skin! Nothing to see here.

It was not that they would have been revealed by the crack, but I had that peace of mind and did not panic when I felt the t-shirt being ripped.

I got a lot of acclaim from a couple of boys who were watching our game, and Galia admonished Doria.

I got a replacement blouse from Theresa. It was a bit too narrow for me, but it worked, and I was back to the play in one minute.

Galia had anyhow stopped the game in order to have a chat with the other team. I guess she wanted to advise them on their tactic and also to break the dynamic. It is a used tactic by many trainers to try to break the goals series of one team when you observe that your team starts losing.

Well, we observed immediately that they changed their playstyle. They started with more passes pushing us slowly in front of our gate. It was a couple of minutes of pressure, and then Lena tried to execute. She was in the middle and got the ball from June. Doria and Sarah were in front of her, so she jumped as the two protected her and shot; however, our maverick goalkeeper touched the ball, changing its direction enough to make it hit the bar and ricochet to me. I captured it and saw Tina too far away from her gate. With a grin, I shot a long shot over the whole terrain. Tina ran backwards, flapping her hands, trying to deflect the ball, but it was too late; the ball entered the goal in the last ten-fifteen centimetres between the upper bar and her hand. Damn, I am an assassin; I threw so many death stars; throwing things is second nature to me, plus assassins are masters at improvisations.

I was surprised to see the joy and energy that engulfed my team and the despair and bad looks I got from the others. Come on, it is just a game? They were still leading seven to five.

In the end, we won nine to eight, but at eight to eight, Doria tried to take me out. I mean, really, she did not come for the ball; she came right at me like a bull to a toreador, like a sumo ringer.

I could have avoided her, I could have jumped over her head or simply slapped her head so that she would land on her nose, but any of these would require me to push a little bit above what a normal human would be able to do. Plus, I might break her neck if I'd slapped too hard. I had only a fraction of a second to decide what to do. On one side, I wanted to punish the bully, get her nose between two fingers and break it, but on the other side, I realized this does not really fit here.

So I let her hit my belly with her shoulder, fell backwards, put my knee on her belly and rolled her over the side. Riding over her, I grasped her hands with my hands and looked at her.

"Really?"

I did not say a word further, and she also did not, but I don't think she will try this on me again. You realize when the other is stronger when he pushes you so easily to the side when I did not even suffer when her shoulder hit my belly.

Of course, Galia was there in an instant, screaming:

"Girls, girls!" - she then admonished Daria strongly - “What's the matter with you?” - she then turned to me with angry eyes - "No fighting here!!"

I raised only a brow. I did not deserve that? That was no fighting!?

Then we executed the fault; a nervous Helen threw the ball to Constance, who almost missed it but redirected it towards me in the last second; I grabbed the ball, jumped in the air, and scored, and Galia ended the game.

Of course, we celebrated with screams and clapping hands and whilst we were on the way to the locker room, Galia stopped me:

“Nice progress Dolores, nice progress. Well done!”

“Thank you!”

“Have you trained?”

“Ah… no… I just played with some friends for fun..”

“Oh”

She hesitated a moment, then asked me:

“Are you interested in joining our school's team? You showed talent; with training, you could really be an asset to our team, and you know this may help for college later?

I sighed.

“I will think about this.”

“You better do. It was a very nice game; I see that you have potential; we have….”

And she started to explain to me all the advantages I would get, but I did not think I really wanted to do it. Being in the team would mean I would have to always control myself.

No, thank you, that was stressful enough, and there is always a Daria who pushes things too far. Sometimes Cala might lose her nerve or attention and hit a little harder, and that would be it.

We went for the showers, and I delayed in order to be almost alone there. I feared the illusions on me might get busted by the flow of water, even if Flo assured me they are beyond this, but it is not only my horns; there are also Cala's scars, Cala's face and those floppy stubs of wings. So I was left there with Helen and Julie. Probably they delayed for similar reasons. Not to be seen.

They did not even look at me, so I enjoyed letting the water flow over my body.

After the game, I was suddenly much more popular. I was surprised by the additional attention I got. Oh, speaking of additional attention, we went for lunch, and they all had the opportunity to admire Cala’s appetite. I could not take three menus; two should be enough even if I knew I'll still be hungry after two. Luckily Constance ate only half of her portion, and Helen just a couple of bites, so I finished those even if I felt guilty towards Helen.

“Where do you put all that in?”

Julie was exasperated to see me swallowing that mountain of food with easiness.

“It’s magically absorbed.”

Cala’s answer was serious, but she thought it was very funny.