Scale found her sister’s apartment building familiar. Her lips curled into a slight smile as her eyes scanned upward. The car rolled to a stop and the girls waved goodbye to the driver as they stepped out.
“Still on the 23rd floor?” Scale asked.
“Yeah.”
“How long has dad been staying with you?”
“Three years. Ever since his diagnosis.”
“It’s just you two?”
“There’s a home nurse too. You’ll like her.” Alyssa paused and looked over her sister. “Uh, that is, the old you would have liked her. Do you still—”
“I think I’m ace now,” said Scale. “At least in regards to humans. I’ve never met other dragons so I genuinely am not sure how that’ll go.”
“Oh. That’s interesting. Should I show you some dragon art and see if it makes anything click?” Alyssa smirked and her eyes narrowed into crescents.
“Please no.”
“Oh what about this one?” Alyssa held up her phone and Scale recoiled at the horrific image on the screen.
“We’re in public, Watergss!”
“What about this one?”
“Gaaaaaah!”
-
Henry Altiman sat in his favorite chair and watched the news. He never evacuated when the orders came in. His daughter hadn’t asked him to either when she left. The idea of a gate break wasn’t half as intimidating to him as the idea of his st child being at ground zero. After he dismissed the nurse earlier, despite her protestations, he cracked open a six pack and decided to rex. This was America and no one could force him to leave his home if he didn’t want to. He only had a year or two left at best anyways.
Life had kicked Henry in the balls more than most men in their early 60s—at least by his own metrics anyways. His first wife died during a gate break, leaving him a single father. She was torn apart by the monsters that crawled out of that accursed dimension. Overwhelmed by his grief, he wasn’t a good father. He regretted it. He regretted it so much it burned.
Henry hated the gates. He hated the [System]. He hated magic. The gates had stolen his first love and then his son. The gates infected the world with the very disease that was ripping apart his insides. Now a massive SS-rank one was threatening to steal his daughter from him too. He had begged her to retire many times over the st five years to no avail. She was too much like her mother, Henry’s second wife Martha. Briefly, he wondered how that nutcase was doing down in Florida as the arm kxons finally died down. He pulled his earplugs out and grinned as the news station started reporting on the successful clear of the massive gate on the eastern outskirts, a clear with no casualties.
He did frown as the Returnees’ names were listed. As a non-awakened he couldn’t see the [System] messages and his daughter hadn’t told him, but the one that nded nearby was some ‘Princess’ or something. It wasn’t Jacoby.
Part of him felt relief at his daughter passing another trial. Part of him felt like shit that it wasn’t his son returning. All of him felt like cracking open another beer.
Some time passed as he watched the news and drank a few beers. A clicking sound made him turn his head. He muted the television when he heard the front door unlocking. He stood, wobbling a touch until he steadied himself with his cane, and walked from the living room to the foyer to welcome Alyssa home—
And Henry froze.
Standing next to Alyssa was a young woman with white hair and piercing blue eyes.
“Dad, this is—” Alyssa started to speak but stopped talking when she noticed the tears rolling down her father’s face. His cane cttered to the floor.
Everything about Scale looked different from Jacoby. She had a different height, a different gender, a different hair color, eye color, and build.
But those things weren’t what defined a person. They held nothing on the soul.
The nervous fidgets. The subtle exasperated gnce at Alyssa. The tongue clicks. The way she took off her right shoe first without untying it and then set it on the rack in Jacoby’s pce without a second thought. The twitchy finger movements that clutched at her shirt. The way her eyes moved when they met Henry’s gaze. The subtle closeness the two siblings shared, standing together with ease despite Alyssa's typically prickly attitude to strangers. The posture. The way she held herself. Every expression. Every movement. Every intangible thing. Every single detail matched perfectly. The appearance changed but the soul was the same.
“Fucking idiot,” said Henry. “The fucking gate lopped off your dick?”
“It didn’t even let me stay human.”
“And you,” Henry pointed at Alyssa with his finger. His voice was shaking. “Why didn’t you text me?”
“I asked her not to.”
“Fucking idiot. Fucking—” His voice trailed off and he started to fall over. Scale jumped forward and caught her father. He was rail thin and felt fragile. She could feel a dark pulse from his body, a mass of twisted magic that was slowly choking the life from him. Healing this would be difficult even for someone on Scale’s level. It would take time.
Henry’s trembling arms wrapped around Scale’s neck and he pulled her into a tight hug. He cried. The hardass that didn’t shed tears at his own wife’s funeral was crying. Scale’s lip shook. Her heart burned.
“I missed you.”
“I missed you too, Dad.”
-
“So you’re going to be posing as the younger sister?”
“You agree it’s stupid, right?!”
“Look at me? Who would believe this cute body is over 30?”
“But the timeline doesn’t match. It only works if people think I cheated on Martha!”
“Dad, you did cheat on Martha.”
“Fucking idiot. Those are only rumors, but if a kid suddenly appears it’s like giving wings to a tiger!”
The three were currently engaged in a brutal verbal war at the kitchen table. Cheap delivery taco wrappers were scattered about like soldiers fallen in the line of duty. At some point the nurse returned and was, unfortunately, wrapped into the conspiracy.
“No grandkids. A gay daughter and a genderbent, nonhuman son. Woe is me! The Altiman bloodline dies. Those fucking gates—”
“Doesn’t uncle Barney have like four kids?”
“HE’S NOT A TRUE ALTIMAN. That bastard brother of mine…”
The conversations dragged on into the night. Eventually the two sisters id their father down on his bed as he mumbled nonsense words. The nurse had colpsed in a chair nearby. Scale had been worried about her overhearing everything but was relieved to learn the nurse had a contract with the Awakener’s Association.
“Lyss,” said Scale. “I think I can heal him.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
“But it’ll take time. I’ll need at least a month. He’s fragile. Very fragile. Intricate spellwork is my biggest weakness and this thing that’s eating away at him is high level.”
“There are no S-rank healers in America, and the ones from India and China wouldn’t help. I’d given up hope…”
“They wouldn’t have been able to help. Not unless they were at the level of a Consteltion.”
“Umm, is it okay for me to be hearing this?” The nurse asked. Her dyed pink hair wobbled like jelly. She looked like she was a cospyer at an anime convention.
“Will you go around telling anyone, June?” Alyssa fired back.
“No but what if the Association asks me? I can’t just ignore Theo. I want to live, too.”
“Just tell them,” said Scale. “They have some idea of what I’m capable of already. I doubt they’d make things hard for me.”
She stretched her right hand forward and a blinding but gentle light filled the room.
