My wings beating, I soar off in the direction of my hometown, three-hundred feet off the ground, the wind whipping at my hair and clothes as I push for as much speed as I can, my tail shing as I vent some of my anger at what had happened.

  A hint of guilt twinges in my gut as I think about the damage I’d done to dad’s van, but his proud look as I’d shattered the windscreen and vaulted out warms my heart. My sisters cheering had been sweet, too.

  The next three days are going to suck, though. I’d been looking forward to spending time with my sisters and dad, and hoping mom would’ve gotten, if not accepting of me, at least USED to my condition. That hope has died, sadly, with only a whimpering plea.

  I can only imagine what’s happening back there, a handful of miles away by now, as I power on through the te-afternoon sun…..

  “WHAT. THE HELL, JULES?!” Derek Crane explodes at his wife, as he clenches his fists, eyes wild with barely-restrained rage.

  “You don’t understand!” She screams back, her eyes wide with impassioned bmelessness. “Ever since our son stole those powers from his sister, he’s been acting wildly out-of-order, convincing himself, his sisters, and YOU, that he’s a tranny, and now he’s trying to become a goddamned superhero or something!”

  Philippa marches forward, Niko’s knife in one hand, and sps her mother across the face, a crackling jolt striking at the same time her palm does, delivering a stinging, 300-volt charge. Philippa’s purple hair is haloed with the static charge roiling through her whole body.

  “You BITCH!” She hisses, loud enough that it’s almost a shout. “You never even saw, did you?! She was always quiet! She hated having her photo taken, or haircuts! She never seemed that fussed when we went shopping, or compined at having to cook, or when you ruined her white t-shirts by washing them with red. Did you even notice she wore those accidentally-pink t-shirts until they were almost unsalvageable?!”

  Tricia, with only the slightest limp, joins her older sister in delivering a second sp. Despite having lost her powers, Tricia’s lifetime of training has made her stronger than most baseline humans of her age, and the blow causes Julia Crane’s head to snap back.

  The woman straightens herself, eyes starting to fill with matriarchal fury.

  “How DARE you?! I am your MOTHER! I will NOT be treated like this-!”

  Niko looms over her female parent, her height and surprisingly-broad build seeming to grow, darkness almost pooling around her feet. Even without her little knife, her nails are sharp enough to cut through her skin and thick, dark ichor is rippling and flowing around her knuckles, forming different blood weapons. Knuckleduster, punch-dagger, katar, Japanese war fan, cws….

  “You…. Shut…up….” She growls, and for the first time in memory, Niko’s naturally-expressionless face is twisted in a look of pure revulsion. The sheer vehemence in the dark girl’s voice is enough to make her sisters take a step back, as their oldest sister gives a murderous gre at her mother.

  Niko’s slow, methodical speech begins to flow smoother, faster, until she’s speaking more fluidly than any time before.

  “You shut up. You have NO. RIGHT. To belittle our sister. RIKA has done nothing wrong. SHE has the right to be herself. To live as herself, to express herself in ways she wants, to be the real, authentic HER. Dad can accept her. Can love her, and cherish her. Tricia, Philippa, and I can accept her, and love her, and cherish her. And if you can’t, if you REFUSE to accept your fourth daughter, then you are NOT a part of this family anymore. “

  Niko slowly raises her bloodied fist, holding a sharp spike of bck, solidified blood.

  “You raised us as warriors from the moment our powers manifested. You trained us to fight, and charged us with defending those who needed it, to save lives, and protecting the innocent, the weak, the HUMAN. To do the right thing. And yet you would rather deny, deny, deny. The truth is right in front of us all. Rika is a girl, with incredible powers, who never got the training and experience we did, and yet she wanted to help us. To join us in defending the world from monsters. If YOU’VE broken her, if YOU’VE destroyed her dreams of wanting to save people, their deaths are on YOUR hands. And if you don’t leave our home, I will. And I’ll go free-nce.”

  “Same here.” Philippa snarls, her eyes crackling with lightning. Tricia nods in assent. “I may have no powers anymore, but I’m more than capable of taking the role of command-centre.”

  While Julia Crane gapes, unable to process the sudden fact that her whole family has turned on her in a way she hadn’t expected, Philippa snatches up the dropped cellphone. “Guys, back in the van. We’re going home. YOU can fucking walk.”

  Julia holds out her hand. “Give me my phone, Philippa Marie Crane!”

  As Niko and Tricia slip into the van, Derek starts the engine. With a nasty scowl on her face, Philippa overloads the mobile with a powerful shock, shorting out every single circuit and capacitor with a crackling discharge. Tossing the warm, smoking husk back to her mother, Philippa turns her back and climbs into the car, the door smming with a distinct finality. The auto-locks click down as Derek turns the wheel, not giving his wife a chance to even TRY to get in. He shouts through the broken windshield.

  “Use this as a chance to figure out how wrong you are, Julia. And, for what it’s worth, I agree with the girls. We have FOUR daughters, not three, and you’ll have an easier time if you just learn to accept that.”

  The wheels screech over the tarmac, sending a few errant shards of windshield sparkling into the gutter, as Julia Crane watches, mouth hanging open, left behind on the road with only her handbag. Slowly, she starts to trudge back the way they’d come, compining quietly to herself…

  When I get home, I head for my bedroom. I want to grab my diary, the same one I’ve been writing in for years. However, my key turns easily in my bedroom door lock. TOO easily. Like someone… opened it, recently.

  Stepping in, I note the faint cover of dust on the floor. There’s… a trail of footprints, leading to my desk. They stop in front of the left-side drawer. Then they come back the way they came, stopping as they leave my room. The prints have a very distinct design that matches my mo- my egg donor’s… favourite shoes.

  There’s a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. My cws click softly over the floorboards as I traipse over to the hidden spot I kept my diary, and, when I pull the drawer open, my heart tries to choke me by leaping into my throat. The secret compartment I’d made, using a piece of board to make the drawer slightly smaller with a concealed yer. It’s open.

  “No… I hid it, but… how…?”

  I stare down, eyes wide. My diary’s… gone. I almost die right there, my eyes wide enough that my eyeballs feel like they’re about to fall out of my skull.

  Every entry, from when I was eight years old and starting to realise that being a boy felt wrong. That I wanted to be… I needed to be… I WAS… a girl. For thirteen years, I’d been using that diary to pour my heart out, entry after entry, dates and even times marking out the history of my dawning awareness of my ‘self’.

  And now... my privacy’s been invaded. I have no idea HOW she managed to unlock my door, but I don’t care.

  “She stole my diary…! And everything I wrote in it, she’s…!”

  My phone’s been dead for a while. I haven’t been willing to risk asking a Stormscale to try and charge it. Philippa could, but I’d forgotten in the excitement of seeing my sisters again. I plug it in to recharge, letting it suck up all the power it needs, as I sit heavily on my bed. Shifting back into human form and wrapping my arms around my stomach, hunching in on myself, I breathe in short, sharp gasps, my cws threatening to punch back out as I feel the temperature in the room plummet, frost forming on the insides of the windows.

  With effort, I centre myself, focusing on controlling my emotions. Just like Jekk taught you… just like that… Haaaaaah…. Haaaaaahhh…

  Slowly, the itch of scales attempting to push through my skin recedes and my cws stop threatening to snick out into killing-pce. I uncurl, and the temperature starts to return to normal as I stop making things cold.

  Lost in thought, it takes a few moments for me to register the sound of the front door opening and closing. Voices call my name, and I perk up.

  “Helloooo! Riiiikaaaaaa!”

  “Baby sis! It’s just us, we left mom to walk back!”

  Even dad’s calling out, too.

  “Come on down, Sweetpea, you’re not in trouble! In fact, good on you for standing up for yourself, young dy!”

  I stand, unplugging my phone from the charger and slipping it into my pocket. “Coming!”

  As soon as I get downstairs, I’m mobbed by three sisters and a dad, all of whom are hugging me and making sure that I know they do NOT share mom’s opinions or attitudes towards me. The outpouring of love is almost blinding, and I can’t help but feel reassured as dad immediately gets to work calling a locksmith to change the doors out.

  He hands me a set of the new keys, grinning. “She’ll have to find a hotel for a while. If she sincerely apologizes, we’ll let her back in. But if she’s going to be stubborn about this, then she’s going to have a rather uncomfortable time of it. I’m so sorry, sweetheart. She’s always been hard-headed, but I never thought she could be THIS mulish…”

  I lean into the hugs, Niko’s arms draped over my shoulders as she rests her chin on the top of my head. The feeling of her, of Philippa and Tricia’s arms, and of dad’s embrace, too, finally kills the tingling, itching sensation of scales forming below the skin and the pricking of cws trying to slide into pce.

  I sigh. “I’m okay now, guys. I promise. I just… wish it hadn’t had to come to this. But I figured she wouldn’t let things go the way I was hoping.”

  Tricia smiles, booping me on the nose. “Well, it’s a good job we’ve all been getting compensated for our magical-girl work! We can easily afford an apartment somewhere in town! We can go free-nce, so mom won’t have any control over you being a heroine, if you still want to…?”

  I feel a fluttering in my chest. “Yes! I do! And I’m stronger than I was, so I think I’d be pretty good at it, too!”

  As if on cue, an arm starts bring from Niko and Philippa’s phones. They pull them out and stare down. Philippa grins. “Well, here’s your chance! We’ve got a big one! Two of us can manage, but with three… Iit’ll give us some sisterly-bonding time!”

  I smile. “Yeah! Let’s go! I’ve been itching to show you what I can do, now that I’ve had some training!”

  I step up, as Philippa catches a small amber crystal from Tricia. I remember it. The magic item used to block any perception of monster-reted damage, making humans see it as only a normal amount of destruction. Like a car-accident or burst water main.

  I ask eagerly, “Where is it? Is it far?”

  Philippa shows me the screen of her phone. “Not too far, an industrial park on the west-side of town. We can be there in ten minutes!”

  I grin. “YOU can. I can be there in one!”

  I sprint for the door, and, as soon as I’m outside, I leap, wings appearing and snapping out in a leathery boom, and rocket upwards at speed. From three-hundred feet, it’s easy to spot the location, and I power through the air, my tail forming like a ribbon of muscle and scales, my legs altering as I flex my footcws, scales rippling up my thighs and down my forearms, covering my back and sides, my cheeks, and my neck. My horns, short, jagged protrusions of what look like ice crystals, punch out, and I sigh, feeling my vision improve dramatically as I blink. I have a secondary set of eyelids now, clear and membranous, that close vertically instead of my normal ones’ horizontal shutting.

  I feel a tingling anticipation. Battle looms on the horizon, and my dragon blood sings eagerly, desperate to be unleashed…