“Bye, daddy!” Mary said before closing the car's door. Her father didn't answer - didn't even look at her. He was racing away from the school building like a demon threatened with a double-lesson of Authorianism theology. He surely loved her, like, that's what parents do - he was just busy. Right?

Mary walked into the grey building with windows covered in thick, steel bars. Only then did she hear a distant roar, and her heart skipped a beat. It... it was nothing. It had to be. For Mary, it was a big day - she was presenting her big project, and she wanted everything to be perfect. The girl flashed a nervous smile at the lady marking attendance on a clipboard, who didn't even look up from her papers.

The student looked behind herself and almost jumped. She'd forgotten her shadow again! Oh, Mom would be so angry! But there was nothing Mary could have done at the moment, so she readjusted the shoulder straps on her backpack and carried on. The thin strap buried itself deep into her skin - it was the extra weights. She was assigned extra twenty pounds last week when she failed to slouch enough two days in a row. But the extra weights would help, and her teachers would be proud of her again! Well, not really again...

Mary drifted through the corridors, passing students standing in circles of various sizes. She wasn't allowed into any of those yet - she usually stood in a circle with just herself. It was ok, though - Aria said that if Mary would continue doing her homework for her, she'd be allowed to stand just next to hers in a few weeks.

She reached her classroom and sat in a forward-tilted chair. It was profiled especially for her so that she wouldn't risk accidentally straightening up during a lesson. She started taking things out of her backpack, careful not to disturb any of the weights when a coughing sound brought her back to the world around her.

“Mary Susan Oceanrunner,” Ms Stella looked at her sternly, absentmindedly petting a small bulldog sitting on her desk. “How much longer will we have to wait for you?”

Mary jumped out of her seat, feeling heat rushing to her face. All the other students were looking at her, and as she was already mid-way to the blackboard, it turned out that she jumped off too fast, and her chair collapsed. She had to go back and straighten it up, then back to the blackboard again, all while everyone else laughed at her. Well, almost everyone - Ms Stella didn't laugh. She never laughed, only stared at her with signature disapproval oozing from her eyes.

“So? Where is your project?” Ms Stella asked.

Mary froze. She forgot her project! A salvo of laughter tore through the class.

“And what are you wearing, child? What do you think this is?”

Mary looked down to see that her pants were gone - she was only wearing her plate underwear! The girl tried to cover herself with her arms, which wasn't working at all. She ran back to her chair to cover herself with a desk, but Ms Stella was having none of it - Mary was to stay next to the blackboard until she finished her presentation.

Mary somehow sobbed her way through the entire thing without any of the props she'd been preparing for months, sure that her words were completely inaudible over her classmates' laughter. And the end of the lesson wasn't the end of her trouble.

“We're going to the headmaster's office. Your parents are already there,” Ms Stella said as she marched Mary through the entire school, passing her classmates who were pointing at her and laughing from their circles.

The office was huge, and its walls were covered by folders their entire height. Stacks of papers were standing next to each other in both organised and chaotic manners. All of them were the exact same shade of greyish pink.

Mary was placed in a chair next to her mother's. The desk was so high, and the chair so low, that even when Mary dared to look up, she couldn't see the headmaster's face. Her mother wasn't looking at her, focusing on the distant face entirely. Ms Stella was standing to the back, breathing down Mary's neck. Mary could hear the roar again - and this time, it lasted a whole thirty seconds but seemed more distant too.

“... and she never fills any of her papers. We're done,” her mother said.

“Is that so?” an alien, booming voice rang from high above.

“Yes, quite right. The idiot girl all but killed two of her closest friends, and enough is enough. We've already signed the divorce papers. We just need the school to take her off our hands. Permanently.”

Mary wanted to think that she couldn't believe her ears, but she could. She always felt that it was going to end like this. And it was all her fault.

“Well then. We'll just need-” The booming voice broke off, then continued with a mechanical undertone. “need-. need-. nnneeeeeeee...” Thunder rumbled through the room, cutting through the breaking voice of the headmaster.

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Ms Stella turned to the door just as Aria ran into the office. “What in Author's name is happening!?” she demanded.

“I don't know,” Arya sounded panicked. “I'm pushing the beast away. It has to be something-”

“Does any of you have the slightest idea how annoying all of this is?” A different, smooth voice asked, seemingly from everywhere at once. A crack ran through the reality, sending rays of white and black light burning through the room, dissolving the stacks of books on contact.

“It's too much, I can't-” Aria started to say when the entire world shattered to pieces leaving only Mary, Ms Stella, and Aria standing on a narrow path through an endless sea of stars. In front of them stood an older boy, clad in black and white, without a single trace of grey on his person.

“I have gone through all the trouble, filled all the necessary paperwork, by hand and in three copies each,” he strolled towards the group, who stood frozen in place. “And after all this trouble to make the incursion legal, I get a busy line?” He onehandedly pushed Ms Stella to the side, off the path and into the void - the woman changed as she fell, shrinking into a size of a kid. Her scream died off quickly.

“Quick Mary, he's a villain, we can-” Aria started to say, but was cut off when the boy lifted her up by the throat.

“Aria Largestone. Such a delightful world you've created. Too bad it was just... a lie.” The boy all but hissed the last word, and somehow it echoed in the nothingness around them as if repeated by the distant stars.

Mary stood paralysed as the pink-haired girl struggled to catch a breath. She had a feeling she was supposed to be doing something about the situation, but other thoughts barged their way into her mind. Something about truth...

“Veritas?” Mary asked, the name popping into her head. She looked into the boy's shining colourless eyes, and some of their light penetrated the cloud covering her mind, and...

Everything flooded back into her mind. Her parents hadn't left her like that. They died when she was little. She was fifteen, she wasn't going to school with Aria (well, not the normal kind of school), she had been in the middle of the fight when someone threw some sort of gas grenade, and...

“What are you doing to her?” Mary asked warily, searching for any weapon to use against him but finding none. Of course, she didn't even have pants, for Author's sake, how would she have a weapon?

“Teaching her a valuable life lesson,” the boy said smoothly, releasing the grip and letting the gasping girl hit the ground, or whatever it was that they were standing on. “I do not appreciate liars very much, and that? That was one of the worst lies I've seen this month.”

Mary's sense of duty combated her sense of righteous fury at the person who created her nightmare, and who laughed at her from the first-row seat while doing so. Well, what could she do, really? They were in Veritas'es domain, Mary had no weapons, and apparently, her small body was even weaker than her real one.

“You will not tell a lie, show a lie, or think a lie, ever again,” Veritas said in a perfect monotone whisper that felt like it was coming from inside Mary's head - and the villain wasn't even speaking to her. His eyes shone stronger with that pure-white light as an orb of the same material formed in his hand. “And you will learn the respect the hard way if that's what it takes.” The ball of light slammed at the other child's chest, carried her a hundred yards into the void and expanded to the size of a small room, trapping the little criminal psycho inside.

The villain flicked some invisible dust from his pitch-black jacket. “Would you mind reminding me where we have finished the last time?”

“You know, you could have fixed my clothing why you're at it,” Mary said, for once wishing her unnaturally pale skin back, so she could stop blushing. She still tried to cover herself with her arms, now that the fighting seemed to be done, but had little to show for it.

“Oh no, that one's entirely on you, actually,” Veritas said. “You have at least eighth level powers - even if you're not a proper Dreamer yourself, you can control how you project yourself. I wouldn't impose myself on you hard enough to interfere with your image - it would hardly be polite.”

“Then how do I...?”

“Just imagine yourself the way you want to be seen, feel that it feels more you than your current you, and channel a bit of your power, whatever that is. Easy.”

Mary closed her eyes and imagined being herself again. Her true self. A few seconds later, she was looking down at her usual body with her regular set of clothing. She let out a sigh of relief, even as she noticed the paleness of her skin and black veins creeping beneath it.

“Thanks. And thanks for your help earlier, too.” She meant it. What he did was... actually nice?

“Don't mention it,” Veritas waved a hand. “I hate that kind of dreamers, thinking themselves funny while abusing their power to the limit of their meagre imagination. Still, those traumas were a bit pathetic, to be honest.”

Yeah, 'nice' wasn't really the right word, was it?

Veritas looked to the side at some specific point of nowhere, and cocked his head. “You know, I hate to have our meetings interrupted early every single time, but it appears that you're needed elsewhere. Goodbye, Mary Oceanrunner.”

And before Mary gathered her words to reply, the nothingness sucked her out of the dream.