Belldandy cautiously poked her head out of the bathroom mirror in the Morisato residence. Her hair bound back by a kerchief wrapped around her head, she quickly dropped onto the bathroom sink when she saw there was no one around.
Steadying herself on the faucet beside her (one that was nearly half as tall as she was currently), she eyed the distance to the floor appraisingly. A lightly muttered curse in the room to the left caused her eyes to widen momentarily and precipitated a slightly more hasty descent to the floor. Stumbling slightly as she landed, she paused for a moment, then ran for the door into the living room, peeking out briefly to see if anyone was moving and then darting under a chair.
By the time she came to a rest, centered under the chair, she was panting, a bit from the run (which was longer than she expected at her height) and partially from the illicit thrill of her task. Her current location let her survey the apartment a bit more carefully than she had managed the first time she was here, luckily.
From her perspective, the apartment seemed incredibly spacious, but that was likely a result of her being a fraction of her normal size. Just to her left was the bathroom door that she had entered the room from, and beyond that was a short hallway. To her right, she saw another door and, in the far corner of the room, her Keiichi, asleep in a ratty chair. With a sigh of relief, she saw that the access terminal's information had been correct and he was back to being a man. She felt a little guilty for being so relieved, but surely if Keiichi had wanted to be a girl all the time, the wish would have granted that. At any rate, she had a mission to complete.
She stayed where she was for a few more minutes before she slipped across the room to Keiichi's side. Lying next to him, she found a pile of what looked like brightly colored magazines, and one was actually hanging loosely from his hand, near enough to the floor that she could reach it. Curiosity seized her and she tugged gently on the magazine, nudging it out of his hand and barely diving out of the way as it flapped to the ground. She ran under her beloved's chair at the noise and hid, but Keiichi's regular breathing indicated he was still asleep.
Creeping cautiously out from under the chair, she seized the cover of the magazine and walked along its length until the page flipped over completely. Crawling over the magazine, she was somewhat surprised to find that it looked like an illustrated story. Intrigued, she started reading, peering around briefly and then growing to nearly twice her current size in order to do so more easily.
Nearly a full ten minutes later, she put the manga aside and sighed as she put her hand under her chin. "That was beautiful. The moment when Miya found out that Ichiro was the Bishonen Baron...I guess I can see why he wou--" A gasp from just above her interrupted the train of thought and sent Belldandy scrambling for her hiding place under the chair. Shrinking even as she moved, she just barely missed Keiichi's hand as it swept along the side of the chair before rising out of sight.
A moment later, Keiichi stood up and started pacing in front of the chair, scrubbing his face with his hands. "That stupid dream again. I need to stop reading that manga, it's doing weird things to my head."
A voice from the hallway Belldandy had noted earlier asked, "What's doing weird things to your head, big brother?" A moment later, Megumi stepped out into the living area and raised an eyebrow at Keiichi's disheveled figure. "You look like hell."
Keiichi groaned, then shook his head. "It's nothing, Megumi, I just had a bad dream, kind of a nightmare really."
"Do tell? What was it about?" Megumi leaned over the back of one of the chairs near the small table next to the hallway.
"I said it was nothing, you don't need to know." Turning away from Megumi, he started towards the door Belldandy hadn't been through yet.
"Well, that leaves me with nothing to do, maybe I should go down to see Sayoko and see if she wants to talk. She's always interested in learning more about you, I bet she'd like hearing some of the stories about your childhood. There was that really great one from when we were eight and you started to--"
Keiichi rubbed his eyes again, then looked up at Megumi. "Alright, alright, I'll tell you, but you can't say a _word_ about this to anyone!"
Raising an eyebrow, Megumi began, "Not even--?"
"No one!"
"Fine, fine, I won't tell anybody about your dream."
"Ok, well, like I said, this was a really weird dream. Disturbingly weird and this is the second time I've had it, though the first time was clearer." He paused to wipe the sweat off his brow, then started pacing again. "It starts with this really beautiful woman coming out of the hallway mirror, and--"
Megumi blinked, then raised a hand to hold Keiichi. "Wait a minute, she came out of the mirror? So there was like a secret tunnel or something behind it?"
Shrugging, Keiichi answered, "I don't know, it was a dream, but it looked like she stepped right out of the glass. Anyway, that's not the weird part, because right after she does this, she says, 'I will grant you one wish, whatever you may desire can be yours'."
"Well, that's cool then, what did you wish for?" Megumi asked, plopping down into the chair she had been leaning on. "Money, wealth, awesome and mighty powers beyond our feeble mortal minds to understand?"
"Err... well, I kind of wished to be a hero, or be heroic, or something like that...and there might have been something about love in there," Keiichi stammered, his eyes flashing towards the pile of comics and back briefly.
Brief or not, however, it was enough for Megumi to catch and notice where he was looking. A sly grin creeped onto her face and she reached over to nudge her brother as he walked past. "Going to be the Bishonen Baron, eh, big brother? Sayoko going to be Miyu?"
"Not exactly," Keiichi continued, "This was where the dream got really weird, because, uh... well, for some reason after this brilliant flash of light, I ended up as... a girl." A faint blush suffused his face, and he gave a nervous laugh as his hand came up to the back of his face.
Megumi blinked. "You were Miyu?"
"It's only a stupid dream." He scowled for a moment. "Anyway, that's pretty much where the dream usually ends. The beautiful woman turns me into a girl and it just ends after I look down in a horrified silence and notice, err... you know."
A minute or so passed, and then Megumi snickered. "So, were you stacked? Bigger than me? Sayoko?" She got up and walked over to where Keiichi was scowling at her and put a hand on his shoulder, a serious expression on her face. "Don't worry, big sister, I'll teach you everything you need to know about being a girl."
Shaking her off, Keiichi stalked into the bathroom, muttering, "I knew I shouldn't have told you," then slamming the door.
Megumi just snickered again, then headed back down the hallway until she was out of sight.
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See other episodes by James M. Zema
(Posted Tue, 05 Aug 2003 04:26)
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