Gift Post #18
Title: In Through The Out Door
Recipient: hoshi_ryo
Rating: PG-13, for swearing and discussion of male and female anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Crona, Medusa, Maka, Liz, Patti, Tsubaki, and others
Summary: Crona wants to be accepted at Shibusen, and she wants to know how to behave there. Every day puts her through guesswork and panic, and on this particular day she has to deal with locker rooms and showers. She knows that she doesn’t look like a typical female-in some places more than others. After tangling with present-day misunderstandings and bad memories, she claims her own place.
Notes: This story happens about three weeks or so after Crona was ‘adopted’ by Shibusen. This story holds fairly close to the manga storyline, except for two things I made up myself. One: Crona grew her hair fairly long between the ages of 7 and 12 years. Two: During that same time period, Medusa offers Crona a mutually beneficial ‘deal’. Whether Medusa intended to keep her end of the bargain is up to the reader’s imagination.
Seven Years Ago.
****************************
The entire wall was covered with bookcases, and every case was filled with books, floor to ceiling. There were many spines in dark-covered materials, some unmarked and some labeled by hand. One was bound in dark red leather, and bore the businesslike imprint HUMAN ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY 15TH ED. It was taller than the other books, over three inches thick, and a foot beyond the fingertips of the girl looking up at it.
“Ragnarok, you can reach it,” the girl whispered. She was seven or eight years old, with thin limbs, a pale face and silky hair past her shoulders. There was something on her back, clinging or riding behind her neck, an animated, humanoid black-and-white toy.
The toy spoke: “Not on your life. When she comes and yanks your hair out I’m saying I had nothing to do with this.”
“Uh huh.” Crona walked across the room to a heavy desk and chair, grasped the chair and pulled it toward herself. The screeching noise the wood made against the stone floor was enough to make her stiffen and glance toward the doorway.
“Crap!” Ragnarok hissed, albeit quietly. “Stop! Fine, I’ll do it. No, don’t put the chair back.”
Crona was still staring into the dim, empty hall outside.
“Now, Crona!”
She relaxed and walked back to the wall of books. “I’ll get up on my toes.”
“No need. Ugh!” Ragnarok extended a pudgy arm, lengthened it like putty, and scrabbled at the edge of the book’s spine. A few scuffling noises later, the book slid from the shelf, flapped in midair and landed, face-open on the floor.
“Oh no.” Crona got down on hands and knees, turned it over and smoothed a sheaf of creased pages. “It’s messed up.” The pages refused to flatten, so she abandoned the idea, heaved a great weight of paper back to expose the book’s index, put her face down nearly to the tiny print, and read.
“One-oh-nine-three…” she whispered, and hauled pages forward again. She stopped at a section of ink drawings, fine and spidery, illustrating male or female torsos with male or female genitalia. Mature adult’s bodies; front views, side views, and tube-mazed cross sections were arranged with the less precise, but rather more disturbing black and white photos of the same.
“Right, look.” Crona said. She got to her feet and gathered her black skirt up, held it in her teeth while she pulled her underpants down. The skirt flopped down again and she sighed, grabbed the collar of her dress and wrestled it over her head. When she had finished, the skirt settled and covered her head like a cowl, but her lower body was bare. “So, I look more like the girl than the boy.”
“You look like a walking twig. Either one of them could fit you up their ass.”
“No, look! It’s more like this one than that one. So I’m probably a girl.”
“Just pick one! Who cares what Medusa says. Nod your head, keep your nose clean, pretty soon we’ll be killing loads of people.”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember those things like you do-“
“Wait.” Ragnarok was silent a moment and then pulled on Crona’s hair. “The book, gimme it. Quick.”
“What?” she breathed.
“She’s back,” Ragnarok hissed. “The book!”
Crona shot the empty doorway a look of pure horror, then ducked down, scooped up the book, and shoved it lengthwise onto a shelf at her own height.
“Damn it, stupid! Not there!”
She whirled and trotted to the opposite exit, slowing to mince softly up the circular staircase. Eight steps up, far enough to take her from the doorway’s line of sight. Her heart pounded. She held onto to the curving banister and listened. She heard patting footsteps growing louder, a light tuneless humming. Then silence.
“Hm!” Medusa said, just a little too loudly to be talking to herself. Crona winced at the screech of the chair being shoved back into place.
“Crona? Come out, now. Don’t make me look for you.”
“Psshhh.” Ragnarok gave Crona’s hair a last frustrated yank, jerking her head to the side. “Idiot.”
Crona took the first step downward and found her knees were wobbly. She turned and grasped the banister with her other hand, too. “Stay with me,” she whispered to Ragnarok.
“Yeah,” he replied. Crona came back in, eyes on the floor, and raised her head enough to see that Medusa was leaning against the desk, waiting.
“I allow you into my library as long as I am here with you.”
Crona was silent.
“Was there something that you wanted? You’re going to be punished for this. I hope it was worth it.”
“I want to know if I’m a girl. Really a girl.” She looked up at Medusa, brave for a moment, but the moment passed and she ducked her head again. “And you won’t tell me.”
“And you imagined you’d find the answer in here? You wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“I did. I think. You have a book that shows, there’s pictures. I just wanted to know.”
“Know what? You are Crona Makenshi, The Demon Sword. You are my child. And it worries me to see you obsess so much over this. I hope you know that no one else does. It seems like a sign of insanity, at best an odd insecurity, but I don’t know where I went wrong.”
Crona balled her hands into fists and directed her upset glare to Medusa’s bare feet. She couldn’t quite look up, but she was almost angry enough to. “No, I-“
“It’s your fault,” Ragnarok offered in an almost jaunty tone. “Holding her back like you do.”
Medusa looked at the creature, and any false warmth drained out of her voice. “I’ll hear from you whether it’s wise or stupid; go on if you’ve something to say.”
Ragnarok leaned far out over the top of Crona’s head, balanced with a paw over each of her ears. She whined a complaint but he ignored her. “If she does what you want, you give her what she wants. I’m sure I don’t have to explain too much.”
“Or indeed, at all.”
“Absolutely, Medusa!” Ragnarok exposed a wide smile of horsey teeth. Medusa gave the creature a dismissive look and then turned her attention to her child. She knelt down, her face rearranging itself into a look of solemn concern. She placed a hand on each of Crona’s shoulders.
“Crona, I wish I did not have to say this. But you’ve been more persistent-and yes, smarter-than I wanted to give you credit for. And you’re right. I was telling you half-truths. You are not truly female, because I integrated…ah, made you and Ragnarok one being, at much too early an age.” She dropped her eyes to the floor, and sighed. “I’m very sorry. I wanted power for you, I wanted you to be strong. I never thought that such a small alteration would be important to you later.”
Medusa waited, looking downward still, and smiled when Crona faintly said “It’s all right.”
Medusa looked up at her. “But if you want this, really want it, I will find a way to give it to you.”
“You can?”
“I made you the Demon Sword. Of course I can make you become a girl. A beautiful girl, or a beautiful woman.”
“Will I have to be older?”
“You’ll… have to be stronger, much stronger than you are right now. It will take some time. I know the process, and it could damage a weak person. Hurt them.”
Crona’s face wavered between hope, worry and childish calculation. “What do I have to do?”
****************************************
From: "Mira Nygus"
To: F_Stein@shibusenstaff.org
Sent: Wed, January 12, 2007 8:32:07 PM
Subject: Makenshi blood profile, news good
Attachments: CMakenshi CBC.doc, gent84996.pdf
Attached please find results of the patient’s [Crona Makenshi] complete blood count and genetic testing. I’m glad to report that the results neither indicate illness or a need for urgent care. Though there are very strange levels in the complete blood count. Low levels, highs, absences that shouldn’t exist. The genetic test results support a diagnosis of Adrenal Hypoplasia, as does the mid-range genital virilization noted during the physical exam. If any of the negative side effects of Hypoplasia exist, they seem to be held in abeyance by the healing/repair functions of the ‘black blood’.
I know that crossing one’s fingers is hardly accepted diagnostic procedure, but I’m going to do it anyway. A terrible thing has been done to this child, without care or caution, and the only person who knows what really happened, and who could advise us, is dead.
Crona seems physically well, although tired and depressed since she and her symbiote were stripped of their collection of souls. She hinted around at the idea of collecting more, whether this would be ever permitted. That led to an odd conversation. Apparently Medusa blamed Crona’s androgynous appearance on Ragnarok, or rather, Ragnarok’s masculinity. According to Medusa and/or Crona, the condition could only be reversed if Crona collected a large number of souls. I doubt this, though I can’t be sure.
Mira Nygus
From: "Franken Stein"
To: Mnygus@shibusenstaff.org
Sent: Thur, January 13, 2007 2:57:03 AM
Subject: RE: Makenshi blood profile, news is good
Hello. Thank you for your prompt message, I apologize for my late reply. Very interesting reading. The anomalies in the blood count make a certain kind of sense, at least I think so, and I’ll send my notes if I type them up. The gaps in Medusa’s reasoning make less sense, as I doubt the demon weapon could alter a living human’s chromosomes. Physical appearance, certainly, but not changes on the genetic level. It sounds more like coercion, doesn’t it?
Medusa is gone, and good riddance. We couldn’t trust her help if she offered it. Did you know Crona apologized to me for Medusa’s behavior? An odd feeling.
I still congratulate you for getting blood samples where I could not. You really must tell me your secret for dealing with Ragnarok, he wouldn’t let me near her. --Stein
*******************************
The hallway was quiet, well lit but deserted, and somewhere drops of water fell with a faint, infrequent musical sound. A metal door at the very end of the hall showed a bright, fiery line around its edges where daylight leaked in. Daylight and sound; a commotion grew closer, muffled clashing and yelling, and something struck the outside with a startling thump. The door swung fast and bounced back against the wall, to be caught by a multiple dusty hands as a flood of kids and noise and hockey sticks flowed past.
"Nah, you did great!" Black Star yelled at the exhausted, sweating Crona. "Just don't chase after the ball so much! Let the others run around, you stick closer to the net, just don't go over the line."
"Line?" Crona breathed. Her pale hair and Shibusen jersey were plastered to her with sweat. Someone smacked into her shoulder as they plowed past, and she staggered. Black Star caught her by an arm and held her steady. "Hey, you okay?"
"Um, just thirsty." She eyed the line at the drinking fountain.
"You bet! I could do a whole two liter and not stop to belch; never mind them, drink out of the shower. It's faster." He let go of Crona's elbow and began to shove ahead in the crowd.
Tsubaki's sleek, pretty head bobbed close over Crona's other shoulder. "You're taking advice from somebody who eats in the bathtub," she teased, and when Crona looked around she was already gone.
"So?" Black Star said. "She reads books in there." He slowed as the mob compressed to file through another doorway. "Two or three, even," he mumbled. "How many do--" He stopped short and Crona bumped into him before he turned around and waved away her automatic apology. "Whoa, hey, you can't go in."
Crona's dazed stare focused into worry. "Ah-"
"Boys' locker room," he clarified, jerking thumb at the blue plaque affixed to the wall. Crona looked too, but the stylized human figure didn't mean anything to her. She looked back at Black Star, who added, "You want the girls' one, go around that way and it's at the other end."
"I was following you," Crona mumbled. She raised one hand to grip the opposite arm, a tell-tale sign of confusion and stress. Black Star noticed, grinned and clapped her on the shoulder, making her flinch. "Dude, you're fine! For a first time at field hockey you did really good! You go on, we'll meet up back outside or something." He turned and swung around a partition, lost from sight.
The last few students dodged around Crona, and she flattened herself against the wall until they had passed. A few feet away, a stocky girl drank from the water fountain, sighed with satisfaction and strode down the hall, rapping her hockey stick on the floor every few steps. Crona watched her; the behavior was not exactly violent, but odd, and it kept her from calling after the girl to ask what was probably a stupid question in the first place. The correct room, the room for girls, had to be somewhere down that way. There was certainly no reason not to walk down the hallway and look for herself. but instead, she walked to the fountain and drank the icy water until her teeth ached, then wiped her mouth and leaned against the wall. the fountain was set back into a small alcove. There was just enough room to slide in sideways and be almost enclosed. Through the wall she could hear and feel faraway shouts, thumps, young male voices making noise, always so much noise in this place.
She wondered where Maka was. She didn’t think that she’d seen her at all, in the crowd. Her absence made Crona feel that the entire situation was somehow, subtly wrong.
I said I didn’t want to go into the locker room, Crona thought, and again she experienced the panicky visual of a room where everyone had to, was made to strip naked whether they wanted it or not. And she said it was okay and everyone did it, but I didn’t have to, and. And she’d be with me when it happened. I can’t remember the rest.
When Black Star had told her she couldn't go into the boys’ locker room, she had felt strange; a touch of hurt under the confusion at making another mistake. But now, listening to the noises from that room, she was glad she hadn't gone in. No, not even if they'd asked her, and probably not the room for girls was no different. She could stay out here. Or go back to her own room. Or step outside, fly across desert and swamp and go home, which was not a place she loved, but she'd known where and how everything was.
Ragnarok emerged and drummed his hands on top of her head. “No can do!” he cackled. “After Boss Man shrank me down? Some wings I’ve got now. Don’t suppose you could get those souls back?”
Crona looked up with irritation. “We don’t need souls-“
“Uh, hey?” Soul said.
Crona jumped. Soul was leaning across the mouth of her drinking-fountain alcove, one hand raised, a towel around his neck.
“Hey drop dead!” Ragnarok replied.
Soul looked up to Ragnarok, then down to Crona’s face. “Yeah. Right. So anyway, Black Star’s kind of an idiot, I guess he left you out here. But at least he told me, so, y’know. Do you need to know where the girls’ locker room is?”
“Ah, no.I don’t…I can’t go in.”
Soul looked uncertain. “Uh. Really?”
“You think we want to look at you runts and your pasty asses?”
Soul lowered one eyebrow and gave Crona a conspiratorial look. “Right. I think I see the problem.”
“Crona is embarrassed,” Ragnarok jeered.
Crona flushed. “Ragnarok, be quiet.”
“Embarrassed?” Soul said. “With you around? That’s impossible. Okay, it’s this way.” He walked a few paces and then stopped and beckoned. “C’mon.”
They walked down the hall and turned right, down another hall with larger doors on the left-hand side. Soul reached out and slapped each door as they passed. “One, two, three, four private showers. The first one,” he pointed back the way that they had come, “Is broken. Basically always broken. But the other four are fine. Towels should be in there. Where’s your clothes?”
“Girl’s locker room?” Crona sighed.
“You sure you don’t want to just go in there?”
“N-no.”
“Die!” Ragnarok yelled.
Soul took no notice of him. “Fine, but if I don’t get your clothes Maka will kill me in the face. I’ll ask somebody else going in there. ” He began to walk away, then turned and pointed. “If you want, the girls’ locker room is that way,” he called. “All the way down, hang a right, you can’t miss it.” He walked further, then turned around yet again. “Pretty sure Maka’s waiting for you!” he yelled.
When he was gone, Ragnarok said, “You have to go in sometime.”
“Leave me alone,” Crona said.
“Suit yourself.” Ragnarok slithered back inside her.
She pushed down the handle of the door nearest her, and stepped into a dark room. There was a faint rush of air and a burring coming from a ceiling fan. Crona let the door shut and leaned against the wall, in total peaceful blackness, until she was calm. There was a great temptation to sit down against the wall and sleep.
She listened to the fan, and noticed that noises carried from the hallway were growing fainter, and she patted her hand around to find the doorknob, and emerged into the lighted hallway.
She trudged down to the end of the hall, turned, and found the locker room. The plaque next to this door had the same stylized human, only this time, wearing a stylized skirt. She
turned away and walked back, stopping at the corner. Someone was calling her name.
It was Soul. She peered around the corner. He was holding a bundle under one arm, which looked like a towel and her own black dress. He called again and moved to the next bathroom door, using one of her shoes to rap on the metal.
Crona returned to the girls’ locker room, pushed the door open and walked in. It was empty. Crona’s heart hurt with relief. It was the reprieve she hadn’t dared hope for.
Then Patti bounced into view from the other side of the locker row, and greeted her. “Hi there!” She sat down on a bench and yanked off one shoe. “You know, if you’re going to take a shower, what I always do is take my clothes off in here and go in wearing a towel. There are lockers in the shower room, too, but they get really weird if you don’t take your shoes off first.”
“Do-do I have to take a shower? I don’t like it with my clothes off.”
“Don’t like what with your clothes off?”
“I don’t know. Myself, I think.”
Patti was now naked, no more self-conscious than she ever was. “Why? I mean, I won’t make you. And there’s some private showers. But there’s nothing wrong with it.”
“I don’t look like a girl.”
“I think you do! Mostly you do.”
“I don’t.”
“Show me!”
The demand was so straightforward, so good-natured, that Crona decided to comply. There was no one else in the room. Patti was friendly. If it had to be done, it may as well be here and now.
Crona pushed her shorts down and lifted her shirt hem a little.
“What, there?” Patti said. She leaned forward and took a good long look.
“Hm!” she said.
***
Maka adjusted her towel. She raised her chin, tried to look nonchalant, and straight-armed the door into the locker room.
Patti and Crona were standing in back by the lockers. Patti was stark naked, smiling at Crona, and Crona was wearing only the gym shirt. Her arms were folded across her chest, and she was staring into a corner of the room.
"Hi", Patti said. Maka nodded hello, keeping her gaze firmly above collarbone level, and turned to Crona, who was now looking down, and a vague worried feeling made Maka look downward, too.
There was a short moment of silence. Off in the showers, someone whooped.
Maka backed up one step, spun around and headed for the door again. "I, 'scuse me--" Her panicked exit path out her on collision course with Liz, who was just strolling in, coffee in one hand and MP3 player in the other. Liz let out a startled noise and coffee splattered up, then down. Maka skidded, wheeled under Liz' right elbow and disappeared.
"Maka!" Liz yelled. Crona looked like she'd been shot at and missed. Liz absently noticed that her shorts were down around her ankles, and she was yanking her gym shirt down to her knees.
Patti looked worried. Patti never looked worried.
"What's going on, what happened?" Liz demanded. She stuffed the MP3 player into her bra and pulled the door open a crack. "Maka?" she shouted out into the hallway. "Maka, are you there?" She pushed the door open a tiny bit more and looked down the hallway in each direction. "Oh, there you are."
Maka hadn't gone far. She was leaning against the wall about a foot away, a white gym towel draped over her shoulders. She looked up and gave Liz a strange, guilty stare.
"What are you doing in the hallway?" Liz demanded.
Behind her, Liz heard Patti raise her voice. “Hey, no, it's okay!"
Liz ducked back inside the locker room, just in time to see Crona haul her shorts up and duck through the swinging door that led to the showers.
"Crona?" Liz called, and apparently that was the magic word, because the door swung in again and cracked Liz on her elbow. Maka pushed though, towel clutched around her throat like a play-pretend cape, and stared at the shower room door, which was still ticking back and forth on its spring.
"Someone start explaining stuff," Liz said into the silence.
**********************************
Crona walked into the next room. The air was steaming and scented, and water crashed and echoed on the tiles. Girls’ voices bounced from wall to ceiling and multiplied in her ears. She stared around, past chatting girls in towels and calm girls toweling their hair dry, looking for someplace to hide herself. The showers were cubes with doors that didn’t even go down all the way. But if she left, she’d have to go back through the locker room. She wasn’t too sure what had happened back there.
One of the cubicles was empty and she started toward it. It was better than nothing.
“You kind of need to take off your shoes in here,” someone said. Crona turned around. It was a tall older girl with deep black hair.
She looked hard at Crona and drew her eyebrows together. “You ok?” Crona nodded.
“Really?” The girl put a hand on Crona’s forehead, then her cheek. Crona was too surprised to flinch.
“I know it’s not hot out there, but you look kind of heatstroke-ish. You’re not seeing spots or anything?”
“No,” Crona said. She backed up toward the wall. “I’ll get my shoes off.”
“Well, hang on. You need a bench. Where’s your locker?”
“I don’t think I have one.”
“Well, it’s…it’s where you left your clothes.”
“Oh, well. It’s over there.” Crona pointed somewhere behind the other girl.
The girl turned to look behind. “In the corner?”
When she turned back, Crona was gone.
Crona latched the shower door shut, wedged herself into the farthest corner, and turned the water on. From the outside, her cubicle should look like everyone else’s, and she was anonymous. Until she tried to escape. She always ran away, sooner or later.
***********************************
"This really isn’t like you," Medusa said. Her voice was a little surprised, a little sad. "It must be my fault somehow. Have I pushed you so hard that I managed to drive you away from me?"
Crona kept her gaze focused on the stone floor. She could see her own feet, one shod and one bare. Neither touched the ground; she was suspended a few inches in the air by broad overlapping black bands, Medusa’s arrow-headed magical straps. Miles from the castle, they had knocked her out of the sky and coiled tight when she scrabbled to her feet, still trying to run. The ground had been soft but not muddy any more, and she could see new kinds of trees on the hills nearby. She had managed to escape quite far.
There was no point in denying it. She could hardly say she’d gotten lost.
“Where did you think you were going?” Medusa pushed off from the wall she’d been leaning against and moved closer. The bands shifted to take up the slack, swishing and curving on the floor. “Crona, you have no idea how to handle yourself. This incident,” she said, moving one hand in a dismissive gesture, “This childish idiocy proves that more surely than anything. Unless you wanted to prove that you don’t need me? Was that it?”
Crona flexed one arm and then the other. They were beginning to feel numb. She did not take the conversational bait.
“You need me more than you will ever realize, but you know, in your own way, you’re very determined,” Medusa said, and Crona could hear the smile in her voice. “Good.” The bands holding Crona loosened, rapidly retracting and dropping her the half-foot to the ground. She staggered for a few moments, then got her balance and ducked her head even more firmly downward. Her long hair caught on her eyelashes and forced her to blink.
“Look at you.” Medusa stepped close and brushed the long strands back from the girl’s lowered face. “You’re not even twelve yet. Where did you think you could possibly go? No friends, no family, no place to live. Just a skinny little girl with one shoe on.”
“I’m not a girl.”
“Oh dear. Now I’ve upset you again. I can’t help it; I’m a mother. You’re mine, and I see you as something like myself. But whatever you choose to be, I promise I will honor my end of the agreement. I will make you into a woman, or a man. ”
“You won’t.”
“You don’t really believe that. If you did, you wouldn’t be collecting souls. You could be working harder, I suppose. But when you become the Kishin I will give you true adulthood, just as you asked. Become what I want for you, and I’ll give you what you want for yourself. That’s fair, isn’t it?”
“I don’t want anything.” Crona finally looked up, and there was anger on her face. “I don’t have to be anything.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you for years. You are Crona Makenshi, the Demon Sword; nothing else matters. You are above and separate from mere men or women. You’re the only one who places such strange insistence on wanting to be a real girl. Or do you want to be a boy now?”
“Ragnarok!” Crona cried out. “Ragnarok, come out!”
Medusa tipped her head back. “No. You can’t mean it.”
“Ragnarok!” she screamed. The black liquid flowed out, formed a sword, placed itself into her hand.”
“You can’t be about to fight me. I notice he has nothing to say.”
Crona raised the sword, held it close to her body, close to her throat. With her other hand
she grasped a handful of her own hair and with the sword sawed it off. She threw the ragged clump to the floor. She continued until her hair was short all around, jagged and wild.
“I don’t want to be a girl. I don’t want to be you. I don’t want to be any part of you.”
****************************
"I’m an idiot,” Maka said. “I thought, I don’t know; I guess I thought she was a boy.”
"Mmm, no," Patti said. “She isn't anywhere near big enough to be a boy. She's just shaped different, there's like a little button in front."
Maka said nothing. Liz looked at Patti. “I can’t believe you conned her into show-and-tell. Crona’s shy, she barely knows us.”
Patti was beginning to look exasperated. "She asked me to! She didn't want to take her clothes off in front of anybody, and I asked her why, and she said she'd show me if I promised not to tell. Um. Oops." She clasped her hands behind herself and shuffled her bare feet.
Maka stood up with just a little too much force. Liz could feel her agitation, and put a careful arm around Maka's shoulders.
"Hey, all right," she said to Maka, "Don't panic, nobody broke a leg or anything. So Crona left because she was embarrassed?"
"Probably."
Liz turned to Maka. "Well, you didn't, like, walk in and yell or anything."
"No!" Maka was staring at the door that Crona had gone through. "I just left. I don't even know why I did it."
"Okay. Patti, could you go find Crona? Don’t drag her back or anything. If she won’t come, I’ll…do something. "
"Right!"
"Put some clothes on first, I think she’s had enough naked for one day."
"I should go," Maka declared. "I have to talk to her."
Liz adjusted her friendly arm-around-the-shoulder into a light restraining grip. "Not right this minute. Patti?"
"Leaving!"
"Let me go, Liz; I have to tell her I'm sorry."
"Later, OK? You're gonna make her nervous. You’re upset."
"I'm upset because I did something wrong."
"Maka, you only feel like that ‘cause you’re embarrassed. It's not a big deal! You wouldn't freak out if you'd walked in on Soul, right?"
Maka answered this with a look of blank amazement.
"OK, I stand corrected. Look, did you take your shower?"
"I don't want one."
"Get changed then, and don't worry. I'm going to clean this up."
Maka nodded and walked around to the mirror wall to get her things. When Liz looked up again, coffee-soaked towel in hand, she saw Maka brushing her hair with a violence that verged on masochism.
Liz looked around for a place to put the towel, and decided to take it home and wash it
herself. She walked around the bank of lockers, passing a silent Maka, who was sitting on the bench with a clenched fist parked on each knee.
Liz rattled her own locker open, dumped three sports bars and a soda out of a plastic grocery bag, and stuffed the towel inside. "Come on. You can't be looking like this when Crona walks in. She's gonna think something awful happened and it's all her fault."
"I have to tell you something."
Liz stopped what she was doing and looked down with concern. "Yeah, okay."
"I didn't walk out of the room because I thought that Crona was a boy."
Liz waited a few moments. "All right, why'd you do it?"
"Because I thought she looked weird. I thought she was a girl, who didn't look quite right. And for a minute I didn't--" Maka breathed in and swallowed, and finished the sentence hoarsely. "--I didn't want to be there. Stupid. Don't know why."
Liz knelt, folding herself down to Maka's eye level. She reached out and tapped Maka under the chin. There was a little resistance, but she made Maka look up. Her face was red, swollen and tear-tracked, her nose was running; she was a picture of perfect misery.
Liz thought for a moment of Patti's hurricane tantrums, screaming, stuff-throwing, tears and then--flippant, easy obedience. "I was going to do it anyway, but then you yelled at me!" Patti set her mistakes behind her, she moved on from them even if you’d rather she thought about it some more. Maka was a different animal, and would chew herself bloody trying to make up for her mistakes.
But Liz had seen other fits of blame, and compared to that, this could be an easy fix.
"You and Kid," she grumbled, sitting down cross-legged at Maka's feet. "I'm gonna chain you guys together and hire a violinist to follow you around. So you're a cruel, judgmental monster or something, right? Can't stand being around anyone who looks different?"
It worked better on Maka than it ever did on Kid; Maka stared at her, completely derailed and confused.
"Maka, there's nothing wrong with you except you're a prude. You're only flipping out 'cause this has something to do with sex."
Liz leaned forward and put finger quotes around "sex", wiggling them near Maka's face. It irritated Liz when people did the finger quotes thing. It seemed to work on Maka, too. Her face became lively, lifting from sadness into good, fiery outrage.
"I am not! Liz!"
"I mean, it was probably really nice growing up all respectable. But geez. You needed to spend a few formative years hanging around the people I knew. Between trying to get grownups to buy you IceBreak and avoiding violent morons, you’d have learned a few things. You'd have tattoos on your butt and probably head lice, but you'd know what intersexed is."
"I know what intersexed is!"
"Yeah, well you can give me definitions while I make you look like you haven’t been crying. Come on, splash some cold water on your face. Up."
************************************************
"Crona, will you please come out? I just have to tell you something." Patti looked down one row of stalls, then the second, stopping to nod at a curious girl who had looked up from examining her toenails. She walked back to the center of the room and aimed her voice at the ceiling for maximum acoustics. "Cro-naaah, please! Are you in here?"
Tsubaki leaned out of a cubicle, looked around cautiously, and stepped softly over to Patti's side. "What happened?" she murmured. Patti took a deep breath, opened her mouth, closed it and instead threw her whole body into an eloquent shrug. "Something happened," she whispered. "She's hiding in here."
Tsubaki nodded, and thought for a moment. "Maybe run the showers," she murmured to herself.
Patti gave her a puzzled look, and Tsubaki crooked her index finger in a "come along" gesture as she walked the length of the shower room, moving very slowly and making hardly a sound. Patti got the hint and jerked along behind her in an exaggerated tiptoe mode, elbows out from her sides.
Tsubaki slowed as she crossed the last third of the room, tilted her head on one side and waited. Several seconds passed, and then her dark eyes turned to her right, and considered the closed door of a beige shower stall apparently no different from any other. She smiled a fraction, moved to the bank of stalls opposite that one, reached in for the shower knob and turned on the water.
The splashing released a snowstorm of of white noise in the room. Tsubaki nodded and turned to Patti. "Could you and Liz please loan something to me? I need your bath set, the multicolored one, if it's all right."
"Ah, sure!" Patti lowered her voice when Tsubaki put a finger to her lips. "Yeah, I'll get it, Liz won't mind." When she came back she was carrying a tray of rounded, rainbow bottles. Tsubaki was leaning naked under the shower spray, lost in thought, or listening.
Patti passed the tray over. "Thought you showered already," she whispered.
"I did. Will these break?"
"Huh? Maybe? They're not glass, though."
"Good. Could you wait in the hallway, please? For about ten minutes. If she walks out, don't stop her, just come tell me. Otherwise you'll hear talking in here, that means it's probably all right to come in."
"What if she won't come out?"
"I think she will. It's all right, you go on. Thanks for the help, too." She patted the row of bottles.
Patti left, and Tsubaki waited a while, then lifted the tray and flung everything in it across the tiled floor. She ducked into the cubicle and swung the door closed. Blue and red bottles bounced and skidded, and three rolled under a certain cubicle’s door.
“Oh no,” Tsubaki called anxiously. She turned the rushing water down to a quiet trickle. “Hello? Could somebody get those for me? Please, I don’t have any clothes on.”
A few moments passed. “Hello? Anyone there?”
A green bottle rolled under the door and stopped against her bare toes.
“Oh, thank you. Who is it?”
Ragged pink hair appeared over the door, and a pair of worried eyes. “Um. It’s me.”
“Crona! I didn’t know you were in here. Thank you, I didn’t want anyone to step on them by accident.”
Two more bottles rolled under the door. “What are they? They’re pretty.”
“They’re soaps, more like shampoo really. They smell wonderful. Here, try this one.” She uncapped a pink one and passed it over the door.
Pale fingers took it. “Oh. It’s…is it fruit or something?”
“Is it?” Tsubaki laughed. “I thought it was roses. I haven’t tried them all yet. Would you like that one? Or probably you’ve already had your shower.”
“No.” Crona’s voice was uncertain. Tsubaki cracked the door and looked through. Crona was still in her gym clothes, even her shoes, all of it soaking wet. Tsubaki didn’t bat an eye.
“You get a good, hot shower and I’ll bring your clothes to you. Where are they?”
Crona began to toe her waterlogged shoes off. “I think Soul might have them.”
Tsubaki paused in winding a towel around herself. “Soul took your clothes?”
“No, he was going to bring them to me. But that was another room.” Crona dragged her waterlogged shirt over her head and straightened, hair spiking out in all directions. “They might be there or in the locker room, I don’t know.” She pushed her shorts down and stepped out of them. “I didn’t want to shower because I didn’t want to take my clothes off.”
“They’re off now,” Tsubaki said reasonably. “And I have plenty of clothes I could loan to you. It’s no problem.”
“Thank you,” Crona said. “I’m really tired. Could you look at me?”
“Of course. Did you hurt yourself?”
“Here.” Crona gestured vaguely below her waist. “I think I’m a girl.”
Tsubaki looked where she was told. “Well, I’m hardly an expert, but I think you’re a girl, too.” She looked up and smiled at Crona. “Would you like me to scrub your back?”
***************************************************
"See, if she'd had, what, three arms or three eyes or bat wings or something--tilt your head up, like that, yeah."
"She does have bat wings. Ugh, you're sticking your finger up my nose."
"I'm just getting your nostrils, they're red. But you see what I'm saying, right? It's not the weirdness part that got to you. Hold on, I need to put some around your eyes." Liz dabbed cover stick under Maka's eyes and regarded her handiwork critically. "This really isn't your color."
"Liz? What have you done to my face?"
"Nothing, really. I think your eyes just need something now. What I'm saying is, I'm not trying to criticize, but you...tried to be brave, in a way that you don't know how to do yet. Both of you did. I'm not sure you and Crona wouldn't have flipped out, just from being naked in the same room. She's really shy. So are you."
"I'm a prude."
"Aaah, not really. I just said that to make you mad."
"No. I think I am."
"Fine. But you know, so is she, so you're kind of a matched set, right? You can be a pair of old ladies that shake their canes at the disgusting youth of tomorrow.”
The door creaked open behind them. “Hello?” Tsubaki called. Patti chimed in, “We’re all ready, who’s here?”
“Right, now be cool, don’t react,” Liz muttered to Maka, and turned around. “Hey, you oh my god, wow.”
Crona was dressed in Tsubaki’s extra clothes; a pale yellow top, loose but tied at the waist, and a long light green skirt. Her hair was brushed back from her forehead and mostly pinned down with silver barrettes. She wore a pair of sandals with intricate straps and buckles. The clothes didn’t fit well, and the colors made her vaguely reminiscent of Easter decorations, but she looked happy and serene.
Until she saw Maka, and her face froze in shock.
Patti grinned and put her head on one side. “Liz, did you do that? She looks like the guy from Clockwork Orange.”
“I’m not finished,” Liz protested.
“Only also, she’s pink.”
Maka cut in. “Hi, Crona! You look like a million dollars. Liz, what’d you do.”
“Nothing! You only have one eye drawn, that’s all.”
“And she’s totally covered in pink stuff.”
Maka got up. “Right, this is the fourth time I wash my face today.” She walked over to Crona. “You look really, really pretty,” she said firmly. “But you did in your old clothes, too.”
Crona was nearly speechless. Her face shone. “Thank you. Ah, Soul has them.”
“Soul took your clothes? I’ll kill him.”
“No, it’s not that…”
Liz got up and walked over to Tsubaki, who was regarding the proceedings with a mischievous gleam in her eye.
“Liz, did you do that on purpose?”
“Applied Misdirection,” Liz said. “It isn’t just for ninjas anymore.”
Recipient: hoshi_ryo
Rating: PG-13, for swearing and discussion of male and female anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Crona, Medusa, Maka, Liz, Patti, Tsubaki, and others
Summary: Crona wants to be accepted at Shibusen, and she wants to know how to behave there. Every day puts her through guesswork and panic, and on this particular day she has to deal with locker rooms and showers. She knows that she doesn’t look like a typical female-in some places more than others. After tangling with present-day misunderstandings and bad memories, she claims her own place.
Notes: This story happens about three weeks or so after Crona was ‘adopted’ by Shibusen. This story holds fairly close to the manga storyline, except for two things I made up myself. One: Crona grew her hair fairly long between the ages of 7 and 12 years. Two: During that same time period, Medusa offers Crona a mutually beneficial ‘deal’. Whether Medusa intended to keep her end of the bargain is up to the reader’s imagination.
Seven Years Ago.
****************************
The entire wall was covered with bookcases, and every case was filled with books, floor to ceiling. There were many spines in dark-covered materials, some unmarked and some labeled by hand. One was bound in dark red leather, and bore the businesslike imprint HUMAN ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY 15TH ED. It was taller than the other books, over three inches thick, and a foot beyond the fingertips of the girl looking up at it.
“Ragnarok, you can reach it,” the girl whispered. She was seven or eight years old, with thin limbs, a pale face and silky hair past her shoulders. There was something on her back, clinging or riding behind her neck, an animated, humanoid black-and-white toy.
The toy spoke: “Not on your life. When she comes and yanks your hair out I’m saying I had nothing to do with this.”
“Uh huh.” Crona walked across the room to a heavy desk and chair, grasped the chair and pulled it toward herself. The screeching noise the wood made against the stone floor was enough to make her stiffen and glance toward the doorway.
“Crap!” Ragnarok hissed, albeit quietly. “Stop! Fine, I’ll do it. No, don’t put the chair back.”
Crona was still staring into the dim, empty hall outside.
“Now, Crona!”
She relaxed and walked back to the wall of books. “I’ll get up on my toes.”
“No need. Ugh!” Ragnarok extended a pudgy arm, lengthened it like putty, and scrabbled at the edge of the book’s spine. A few scuffling noises later, the book slid from the shelf, flapped in midair and landed, face-open on the floor.
“Oh no.” Crona got down on hands and knees, turned it over and smoothed a sheaf of creased pages. “It’s messed up.” The pages refused to flatten, so she abandoned the idea, heaved a great weight of paper back to expose the book’s index, put her face down nearly to the tiny print, and read.
“One-oh-nine-three…” she whispered, and hauled pages forward again. She stopped at a section of ink drawings, fine and spidery, illustrating male or female torsos with male or female genitalia. Mature adult’s bodies; front views, side views, and tube-mazed cross sections were arranged with the less precise, but rather more disturbing black and white photos of the same.
“Right, look.” Crona said. She got to her feet and gathered her black skirt up, held it in her teeth while she pulled her underpants down. The skirt flopped down again and she sighed, grabbed the collar of her dress and wrestled it over her head. When she had finished, the skirt settled and covered her head like a cowl, but her lower body was bare. “So, I look more like the girl than the boy.”
“You look like a walking twig. Either one of them could fit you up their ass.”
“No, look! It’s more like this one than that one. So I’m probably a girl.”
“Just pick one! Who cares what Medusa says. Nod your head, keep your nose clean, pretty soon we’ll be killing loads of people.”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember those things like you do-“
“Wait.” Ragnarok was silent a moment and then pulled on Crona’s hair. “The book, gimme it. Quick.”
“What?” she breathed.
“She’s back,” Ragnarok hissed. “The book!”
Crona shot the empty doorway a look of pure horror, then ducked down, scooped up the book, and shoved it lengthwise onto a shelf at her own height.
“Damn it, stupid! Not there!”
She whirled and trotted to the opposite exit, slowing to mince softly up the circular staircase. Eight steps up, far enough to take her from the doorway’s line of sight. Her heart pounded. She held onto to the curving banister and listened. She heard patting footsteps growing louder, a light tuneless humming. Then silence.
“Hm!” Medusa said, just a little too loudly to be talking to herself. Crona winced at the screech of the chair being shoved back into place.
“Crona? Come out, now. Don’t make me look for you.”
“Psshhh.” Ragnarok gave Crona’s hair a last frustrated yank, jerking her head to the side. “Idiot.”
Crona took the first step downward and found her knees were wobbly. She turned and grasped the banister with her other hand, too. “Stay with me,” she whispered to Ragnarok.
“Yeah,” he replied. Crona came back in, eyes on the floor, and raised her head enough to see that Medusa was leaning against the desk, waiting.
“I allow you into my library as long as I am here with you.”
Crona was silent.
“Was there something that you wanted? You’re going to be punished for this. I hope it was worth it.”
“I want to know if I’m a girl. Really a girl.” She looked up at Medusa, brave for a moment, but the moment passed and she ducked her head again. “And you won’t tell me.”
“And you imagined you’d find the answer in here? You wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“I did. I think. You have a book that shows, there’s pictures. I just wanted to know.”
“Know what? You are Crona Makenshi, The Demon Sword. You are my child. And it worries me to see you obsess so much over this. I hope you know that no one else does. It seems like a sign of insanity, at best an odd insecurity, but I don’t know where I went wrong.”
Crona balled her hands into fists and directed her upset glare to Medusa’s bare feet. She couldn’t quite look up, but she was almost angry enough to. “No, I-“
“It’s your fault,” Ragnarok offered in an almost jaunty tone. “Holding her back like you do.”
Medusa looked at the creature, and any false warmth drained out of her voice. “I’ll hear from you whether it’s wise or stupid; go on if you’ve something to say.”
Ragnarok leaned far out over the top of Crona’s head, balanced with a paw over each of her ears. She whined a complaint but he ignored her. “If she does what you want, you give her what she wants. I’m sure I don’t have to explain too much.”
“Or indeed, at all.”
“Absolutely, Medusa!” Ragnarok exposed a wide smile of horsey teeth. Medusa gave the creature a dismissive look and then turned her attention to her child. She knelt down, her face rearranging itself into a look of solemn concern. She placed a hand on each of Crona’s shoulders.
“Crona, I wish I did not have to say this. But you’ve been more persistent-and yes, smarter-than I wanted to give you credit for. And you’re right. I was telling you half-truths. You are not truly female, because I integrated…ah, made you and Ragnarok one being, at much too early an age.” She dropped her eyes to the floor, and sighed. “I’m very sorry. I wanted power for you, I wanted you to be strong. I never thought that such a small alteration would be important to you later.”
Medusa waited, looking downward still, and smiled when Crona faintly said “It’s all right.”
Medusa looked up at her. “But if you want this, really want it, I will find a way to give it to you.”
“You can?”
“I made you the Demon Sword. Of course I can make you become a girl. A beautiful girl, or a beautiful woman.”
“Will I have to be older?”
“You’ll… have to be stronger, much stronger than you are right now. It will take some time. I know the process, and it could damage a weak person. Hurt them.”
Crona’s face wavered between hope, worry and childish calculation. “What do I have to do?”
****************************************
From: "Mira Nygus"
To: F_Stein@shibusenstaff.org
Sent: Wed, January 12, 2007 8:32:07 PM
Subject: Makenshi blood profile, news good
Attachments: CMakenshi CBC.doc, gent84996.pdf
Attached please find results of the patient’s [Crona Makenshi] complete blood count and genetic testing. I’m glad to report that the results neither indicate illness or a need for urgent care. Though there are very strange levels in the complete blood count. Low levels, highs, absences that shouldn’t exist. The genetic test results support a diagnosis of Adrenal Hypoplasia, as does the mid-range genital virilization noted during the physical exam. If any of the negative side effects of Hypoplasia exist, they seem to be held in abeyance by the healing/repair functions of the ‘black blood’.
I know that crossing one’s fingers is hardly accepted diagnostic procedure, but I’m going to do it anyway. A terrible thing has been done to this child, without care or caution, and the only person who knows what really happened, and who could advise us, is dead.
Crona seems physically well, although tired and depressed since she and her symbiote were stripped of their collection of souls. She hinted around at the idea of collecting more, whether this would be ever permitted. That led to an odd conversation. Apparently Medusa blamed Crona’s androgynous appearance on Ragnarok, or rather, Ragnarok’s masculinity. According to Medusa and/or Crona, the condition could only be reversed if Crona collected a large number of souls. I doubt this, though I can’t be sure.
Mira Nygus
From: "Franken Stein"
To: Mnygus@shibusenstaff.org
Sent: Thur, January 13, 2007 2:57:03 AM
Subject: RE: Makenshi blood profile, news is good
Hello. Thank you for your prompt message, I apologize for my late reply. Very interesting reading. The anomalies in the blood count make a certain kind of sense, at least I think so, and I’ll send my notes if I type them up. The gaps in Medusa’s reasoning make less sense, as I doubt the demon weapon could alter a living human’s chromosomes. Physical appearance, certainly, but not changes on the genetic level. It sounds more like coercion, doesn’t it?
Medusa is gone, and good riddance. We couldn’t trust her help if she offered it. Did you know Crona apologized to me for Medusa’s behavior? An odd feeling.
I still congratulate you for getting blood samples where I could not. You really must tell me your secret for dealing with Ragnarok, he wouldn’t let me near her. --Stein
*******************************
The hallway was quiet, well lit but deserted, and somewhere drops of water fell with a faint, infrequent musical sound. A metal door at the very end of the hall showed a bright, fiery line around its edges where daylight leaked in. Daylight and sound; a commotion grew closer, muffled clashing and yelling, and something struck the outside with a startling thump. The door swung fast and bounced back against the wall, to be caught by a multiple dusty hands as a flood of kids and noise and hockey sticks flowed past.
"Nah, you did great!" Black Star yelled at the exhausted, sweating Crona. "Just don't chase after the ball so much! Let the others run around, you stick closer to the net, just don't go over the line."
"Line?" Crona breathed. Her pale hair and Shibusen jersey were plastered to her with sweat. Someone smacked into her shoulder as they plowed past, and she staggered. Black Star caught her by an arm and held her steady. "Hey, you okay?"
"Um, just thirsty." She eyed the line at the drinking fountain.
"You bet! I could do a whole two liter and not stop to belch; never mind them, drink out of the shower. It's faster." He let go of Crona's elbow and began to shove ahead in the crowd.
Tsubaki's sleek, pretty head bobbed close over Crona's other shoulder. "You're taking advice from somebody who eats in the bathtub," she teased, and when Crona looked around she was already gone.
"So?" Black Star said. "She reads books in there." He slowed as the mob compressed to file through another doorway. "Two or three, even," he mumbled. "How many do--" He stopped short and Crona bumped into him before he turned around and waved away her automatic apology. "Whoa, hey, you can't go in."
Crona's dazed stare focused into worry. "Ah-"
"Boys' locker room," he clarified, jerking thumb at the blue plaque affixed to the wall. Crona looked too, but the stylized human figure didn't mean anything to her. She looked back at Black Star, who added, "You want the girls' one, go around that way and it's at the other end."
"I was following you," Crona mumbled. She raised one hand to grip the opposite arm, a tell-tale sign of confusion and stress. Black Star noticed, grinned and clapped her on the shoulder, making her flinch. "Dude, you're fine! For a first time at field hockey you did really good! You go on, we'll meet up back outside or something." He turned and swung around a partition, lost from sight.
The last few students dodged around Crona, and she flattened herself against the wall until they had passed. A few feet away, a stocky girl drank from the water fountain, sighed with satisfaction and strode down the hall, rapping her hockey stick on the floor every few steps. Crona watched her; the behavior was not exactly violent, but odd, and it kept her from calling after the girl to ask what was probably a stupid question in the first place. The correct room, the room for girls, had to be somewhere down that way. There was certainly no reason not to walk down the hallway and look for herself. but instead, she walked to the fountain and drank the icy water until her teeth ached, then wiped her mouth and leaned against the wall. the fountain was set back into a small alcove. There was just enough room to slide in sideways and be almost enclosed. Through the wall she could hear and feel faraway shouts, thumps, young male voices making noise, always so much noise in this place.
She wondered where Maka was. She didn’t think that she’d seen her at all, in the crowd. Her absence made Crona feel that the entire situation was somehow, subtly wrong.
I said I didn’t want to go into the locker room, Crona thought, and again she experienced the panicky visual of a room where everyone had to, was made to strip naked whether they wanted it or not. And she said it was okay and everyone did it, but I didn’t have to, and. And she’d be with me when it happened. I can’t remember the rest.
When Black Star had told her she couldn't go into the boys’ locker room, she had felt strange; a touch of hurt under the confusion at making another mistake. But now, listening to the noises from that room, she was glad she hadn't gone in. No, not even if they'd asked her, and probably not the room for girls was no different. She could stay out here. Or go back to her own room. Or step outside, fly across desert and swamp and go home, which was not a place she loved, but she'd known where and how everything was.
Ragnarok emerged and drummed his hands on top of her head. “No can do!” he cackled. “After Boss Man shrank me down? Some wings I’ve got now. Don’t suppose you could get those souls back?”
Crona looked up with irritation. “We don’t need souls-“
“Uh, hey?” Soul said.
Crona jumped. Soul was leaning across the mouth of her drinking-fountain alcove, one hand raised, a towel around his neck.
“Hey drop dead!” Ragnarok replied.
Soul looked up to Ragnarok, then down to Crona’s face. “Yeah. Right. So anyway, Black Star’s kind of an idiot, I guess he left you out here. But at least he told me, so, y’know. Do you need to know where the girls’ locker room is?”
“Ah, no.I don’t…I can’t go in.”
Soul looked uncertain. “Uh. Really?”
“You think we want to look at you runts and your pasty asses?”
Soul lowered one eyebrow and gave Crona a conspiratorial look. “Right. I think I see the problem.”
“Crona is embarrassed,” Ragnarok jeered.
Crona flushed. “Ragnarok, be quiet.”
“Embarrassed?” Soul said. “With you around? That’s impossible. Okay, it’s this way.” He walked a few paces and then stopped and beckoned. “C’mon.”
They walked down the hall and turned right, down another hall with larger doors on the left-hand side. Soul reached out and slapped each door as they passed. “One, two, three, four private showers. The first one,” he pointed back the way that they had come, “Is broken. Basically always broken. But the other four are fine. Towels should be in there. Where’s your clothes?”
“Girl’s locker room?” Crona sighed.
“You sure you don’t want to just go in there?”
“N-no.”
“Die!” Ragnarok yelled.
Soul took no notice of him. “Fine, but if I don’t get your clothes Maka will kill me in the face. I’ll ask somebody else going in there. ” He began to walk away, then turned and pointed. “If you want, the girls’ locker room is that way,” he called. “All the way down, hang a right, you can’t miss it.” He walked further, then turned around yet again. “Pretty sure Maka’s waiting for you!” he yelled.
When he was gone, Ragnarok said, “You have to go in sometime.”
“Leave me alone,” Crona said.
“Suit yourself.” Ragnarok slithered back inside her.
She pushed down the handle of the door nearest her, and stepped into a dark room. There was a faint rush of air and a burring coming from a ceiling fan. Crona let the door shut and leaned against the wall, in total peaceful blackness, until she was calm. There was a great temptation to sit down against the wall and sleep.
She listened to the fan, and noticed that noises carried from the hallway were growing fainter, and she patted her hand around to find the doorknob, and emerged into the lighted hallway.
She trudged down to the end of the hall, turned, and found the locker room. The plaque next to this door had the same stylized human, only this time, wearing a stylized skirt. She
turned away and walked back, stopping at the corner. Someone was calling her name.
It was Soul. She peered around the corner. He was holding a bundle under one arm, which looked like a towel and her own black dress. He called again and moved to the next bathroom door, using one of her shoes to rap on the metal.
Crona returned to the girls’ locker room, pushed the door open and walked in. It was empty. Crona’s heart hurt with relief. It was the reprieve she hadn’t dared hope for.
Then Patti bounced into view from the other side of the locker row, and greeted her. “Hi there!” She sat down on a bench and yanked off one shoe. “You know, if you’re going to take a shower, what I always do is take my clothes off in here and go in wearing a towel. There are lockers in the shower room, too, but they get really weird if you don’t take your shoes off first.”
“Do-do I have to take a shower? I don’t like it with my clothes off.”
“Don’t like what with your clothes off?”
“I don’t know. Myself, I think.”
Patti was now naked, no more self-conscious than she ever was. “Why? I mean, I won’t make you. And there’s some private showers. But there’s nothing wrong with it.”
“I don’t look like a girl.”
“I think you do! Mostly you do.”
“I don’t.”
“Show me!”
The demand was so straightforward, so good-natured, that Crona decided to comply. There was no one else in the room. Patti was friendly. If it had to be done, it may as well be here and now.
Crona pushed her shorts down and lifted her shirt hem a little.
“What, there?” Patti said. She leaned forward and took a good long look.
“Hm!” she said.
***
Maka adjusted her towel. She raised her chin, tried to look nonchalant, and straight-armed the door into the locker room.
Patti and Crona were standing in back by the lockers. Patti was stark naked, smiling at Crona, and Crona was wearing only the gym shirt. Her arms were folded across her chest, and she was staring into a corner of the room.
"Hi", Patti said. Maka nodded hello, keeping her gaze firmly above collarbone level, and turned to Crona, who was now looking down, and a vague worried feeling made Maka look downward, too.
There was a short moment of silence. Off in the showers, someone whooped.
Maka backed up one step, spun around and headed for the door again. "I, 'scuse me--" Her panicked exit path out her on collision course with Liz, who was just strolling in, coffee in one hand and MP3 player in the other. Liz let out a startled noise and coffee splattered up, then down. Maka skidded, wheeled under Liz' right elbow and disappeared.
"Maka!" Liz yelled. Crona looked like she'd been shot at and missed. Liz absently noticed that her shorts were down around her ankles, and she was yanking her gym shirt down to her knees.
Patti looked worried. Patti never looked worried.
"What's going on, what happened?" Liz demanded. She stuffed the MP3 player into her bra and pulled the door open a crack. "Maka?" she shouted out into the hallway. "Maka, are you there?" She pushed the door open a tiny bit more and looked down the hallway in each direction. "Oh, there you are."
Maka hadn't gone far. She was leaning against the wall about a foot away, a white gym towel draped over her shoulders. She looked up and gave Liz a strange, guilty stare.
"What are you doing in the hallway?" Liz demanded.
Behind her, Liz heard Patti raise her voice. “Hey, no, it's okay!"
Liz ducked back inside the locker room, just in time to see Crona haul her shorts up and duck through the swinging door that led to the showers.
"Crona?" Liz called, and apparently that was the magic word, because the door swung in again and cracked Liz on her elbow. Maka pushed though, towel clutched around her throat like a play-pretend cape, and stared at the shower room door, which was still ticking back and forth on its spring.
"Someone start explaining stuff," Liz said into the silence.
**********************************
Crona walked into the next room. The air was steaming and scented, and water crashed and echoed on the tiles. Girls’ voices bounced from wall to ceiling and multiplied in her ears. She stared around, past chatting girls in towels and calm girls toweling their hair dry, looking for someplace to hide herself. The showers were cubes with doors that didn’t even go down all the way. But if she left, she’d have to go back through the locker room. She wasn’t too sure what had happened back there.
One of the cubicles was empty and she started toward it. It was better than nothing.
“You kind of need to take off your shoes in here,” someone said. Crona turned around. It was a tall older girl with deep black hair.
She looked hard at Crona and drew her eyebrows together. “You ok?” Crona nodded.
“Really?” The girl put a hand on Crona’s forehead, then her cheek. Crona was too surprised to flinch.
“I know it’s not hot out there, but you look kind of heatstroke-ish. You’re not seeing spots or anything?”
“No,” Crona said. She backed up toward the wall. “I’ll get my shoes off.”
“Well, hang on. You need a bench. Where’s your locker?”
“I don’t think I have one.”
“Well, it’s…it’s where you left your clothes.”
“Oh, well. It’s over there.” Crona pointed somewhere behind the other girl.
The girl turned to look behind. “In the corner?”
When she turned back, Crona was gone.
Crona latched the shower door shut, wedged herself into the farthest corner, and turned the water on. From the outside, her cubicle should look like everyone else’s, and she was anonymous. Until she tried to escape. She always ran away, sooner or later.
***********************************
"This really isn’t like you," Medusa said. Her voice was a little surprised, a little sad. "It must be my fault somehow. Have I pushed you so hard that I managed to drive you away from me?"
Crona kept her gaze focused on the stone floor. She could see her own feet, one shod and one bare. Neither touched the ground; she was suspended a few inches in the air by broad overlapping black bands, Medusa’s arrow-headed magical straps. Miles from the castle, they had knocked her out of the sky and coiled tight when she scrabbled to her feet, still trying to run. The ground had been soft but not muddy any more, and she could see new kinds of trees on the hills nearby. She had managed to escape quite far.
There was no point in denying it. She could hardly say she’d gotten lost.
“Where did you think you were going?” Medusa pushed off from the wall she’d been leaning against and moved closer. The bands shifted to take up the slack, swishing and curving on the floor. “Crona, you have no idea how to handle yourself. This incident,” she said, moving one hand in a dismissive gesture, “This childish idiocy proves that more surely than anything. Unless you wanted to prove that you don’t need me? Was that it?”
Crona flexed one arm and then the other. They were beginning to feel numb. She did not take the conversational bait.
“You need me more than you will ever realize, but you know, in your own way, you’re very determined,” Medusa said, and Crona could hear the smile in her voice. “Good.” The bands holding Crona loosened, rapidly retracting and dropping her the half-foot to the ground. She staggered for a few moments, then got her balance and ducked her head even more firmly downward. Her long hair caught on her eyelashes and forced her to blink.
“Look at you.” Medusa stepped close and brushed the long strands back from the girl’s lowered face. “You’re not even twelve yet. Where did you think you could possibly go? No friends, no family, no place to live. Just a skinny little girl with one shoe on.”
“I’m not a girl.”
“Oh dear. Now I’ve upset you again. I can’t help it; I’m a mother. You’re mine, and I see you as something like myself. But whatever you choose to be, I promise I will honor my end of the agreement. I will make you into a woman, or a man. ”
“You won’t.”
“You don’t really believe that. If you did, you wouldn’t be collecting souls. You could be working harder, I suppose. But when you become the Kishin I will give you true adulthood, just as you asked. Become what I want for you, and I’ll give you what you want for yourself. That’s fair, isn’t it?”
“I don’t want anything.” Crona finally looked up, and there was anger on her face. “I don’t have to be anything.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you for years. You are Crona Makenshi, the Demon Sword; nothing else matters. You are above and separate from mere men or women. You’re the only one who places such strange insistence on wanting to be a real girl. Or do you want to be a boy now?”
“Ragnarok!” Crona cried out. “Ragnarok, come out!”
Medusa tipped her head back. “No. You can’t mean it.”
“Ragnarok!” she screamed. The black liquid flowed out, formed a sword, placed itself into her hand.”
“You can’t be about to fight me. I notice he has nothing to say.”
Crona raised the sword, held it close to her body, close to her throat. With her other hand
she grasped a handful of her own hair and with the sword sawed it off. She threw the ragged clump to the floor. She continued until her hair was short all around, jagged and wild.
“I don’t want to be a girl. I don’t want to be you. I don’t want to be any part of you.”
****************************
"I’m an idiot,” Maka said. “I thought, I don’t know; I guess I thought she was a boy.”
"Mmm, no," Patti said. “She isn't anywhere near big enough to be a boy. She's just shaped different, there's like a little button in front."
Maka said nothing. Liz looked at Patti. “I can’t believe you conned her into show-and-tell. Crona’s shy, she barely knows us.”
Patti was beginning to look exasperated. "She asked me to! She didn't want to take her clothes off in front of anybody, and I asked her why, and she said she'd show me if I promised not to tell. Um. Oops." She clasped her hands behind herself and shuffled her bare feet.
Maka stood up with just a little too much force. Liz could feel her agitation, and put a careful arm around Maka's shoulders.
"Hey, all right," she said to Maka, "Don't panic, nobody broke a leg or anything. So Crona left because she was embarrassed?"
"Probably."
Liz turned to Maka. "Well, you didn't, like, walk in and yell or anything."
"No!" Maka was staring at the door that Crona had gone through. "I just left. I don't even know why I did it."
"Okay. Patti, could you go find Crona? Don’t drag her back or anything. If she won’t come, I’ll…do something. "
"Right!"
"Put some clothes on first, I think she’s had enough naked for one day."
"I should go," Maka declared. "I have to talk to her."
Liz adjusted her friendly arm-around-the-shoulder into a light restraining grip. "Not right this minute. Patti?"
"Leaving!"
"Let me go, Liz; I have to tell her I'm sorry."
"Later, OK? You're gonna make her nervous. You’re upset."
"I'm upset because I did something wrong."
"Maka, you only feel like that ‘cause you’re embarrassed. It's not a big deal! You wouldn't freak out if you'd walked in on Soul, right?"
Maka answered this with a look of blank amazement.
"OK, I stand corrected. Look, did you take your shower?"
"I don't want one."
"Get changed then, and don't worry. I'm going to clean this up."
Maka nodded and walked around to the mirror wall to get her things. When Liz looked up again, coffee-soaked towel in hand, she saw Maka brushing her hair with a violence that verged on masochism.
Liz looked around for a place to put the towel, and decided to take it home and wash it
herself. She walked around the bank of lockers, passing a silent Maka, who was sitting on the bench with a clenched fist parked on each knee.
Liz rattled her own locker open, dumped three sports bars and a soda out of a plastic grocery bag, and stuffed the towel inside. "Come on. You can't be looking like this when Crona walks in. She's gonna think something awful happened and it's all her fault."
"I have to tell you something."
Liz stopped what she was doing and looked down with concern. "Yeah, okay."
"I didn't walk out of the room because I thought that Crona was a boy."
Liz waited a few moments. "All right, why'd you do it?"
"Because I thought she looked weird. I thought she was a girl, who didn't look quite right. And for a minute I didn't--" Maka breathed in and swallowed, and finished the sentence hoarsely. "--I didn't want to be there. Stupid. Don't know why."
Liz knelt, folding herself down to Maka's eye level. She reached out and tapped Maka under the chin. There was a little resistance, but she made Maka look up. Her face was red, swollen and tear-tracked, her nose was running; she was a picture of perfect misery.
Liz thought for a moment of Patti's hurricane tantrums, screaming, stuff-throwing, tears and then--flippant, easy obedience. "I was going to do it anyway, but then you yelled at me!" Patti set her mistakes behind her, she moved on from them even if you’d rather she thought about it some more. Maka was a different animal, and would chew herself bloody trying to make up for her mistakes.
But Liz had seen other fits of blame, and compared to that, this could be an easy fix.
"You and Kid," she grumbled, sitting down cross-legged at Maka's feet. "I'm gonna chain you guys together and hire a violinist to follow you around. So you're a cruel, judgmental monster or something, right? Can't stand being around anyone who looks different?"
It worked better on Maka than it ever did on Kid; Maka stared at her, completely derailed and confused.
"Maka, there's nothing wrong with you except you're a prude. You're only flipping out 'cause this has something to do with sex."
Liz leaned forward and put finger quotes around "sex", wiggling them near Maka's face. It irritated Liz when people did the finger quotes thing. It seemed to work on Maka, too. Her face became lively, lifting from sadness into good, fiery outrage.
"I am not! Liz!"
"I mean, it was probably really nice growing up all respectable. But geez. You needed to spend a few formative years hanging around the people I knew. Between trying to get grownups to buy you IceBreak and avoiding violent morons, you’d have learned a few things. You'd have tattoos on your butt and probably head lice, but you'd know what intersexed is."
"I know what intersexed is!"
"Yeah, well you can give me definitions while I make you look like you haven’t been crying. Come on, splash some cold water on your face. Up."
************************************************
"Crona, will you please come out? I just have to tell you something." Patti looked down one row of stalls, then the second, stopping to nod at a curious girl who had looked up from examining her toenails. She walked back to the center of the room and aimed her voice at the ceiling for maximum acoustics. "Cro-naaah, please! Are you in here?"
Tsubaki leaned out of a cubicle, looked around cautiously, and stepped softly over to Patti's side. "What happened?" she murmured. Patti took a deep breath, opened her mouth, closed it and instead threw her whole body into an eloquent shrug. "Something happened," she whispered. "She's hiding in here."
Tsubaki nodded, and thought for a moment. "Maybe run the showers," she murmured to herself.
Patti gave her a puzzled look, and Tsubaki crooked her index finger in a "come along" gesture as she walked the length of the shower room, moving very slowly and making hardly a sound. Patti got the hint and jerked along behind her in an exaggerated tiptoe mode, elbows out from her sides.
Tsubaki slowed as she crossed the last third of the room, tilted her head on one side and waited. Several seconds passed, and then her dark eyes turned to her right, and considered the closed door of a beige shower stall apparently no different from any other. She smiled a fraction, moved to the bank of stalls opposite that one, reached in for the shower knob and turned on the water.
The splashing released a snowstorm of of white noise in the room. Tsubaki nodded and turned to Patti. "Could you and Liz please loan something to me? I need your bath set, the multicolored one, if it's all right."
"Ah, sure!" Patti lowered her voice when Tsubaki put a finger to her lips. "Yeah, I'll get it, Liz won't mind." When she came back she was carrying a tray of rounded, rainbow bottles. Tsubaki was leaning naked under the shower spray, lost in thought, or listening.
Patti passed the tray over. "Thought you showered already," she whispered.
"I did. Will these break?"
"Huh? Maybe? They're not glass, though."
"Good. Could you wait in the hallway, please? For about ten minutes. If she walks out, don't stop her, just come tell me. Otherwise you'll hear talking in here, that means it's probably all right to come in."
"What if she won't come out?"
"I think she will. It's all right, you go on. Thanks for the help, too." She patted the row of bottles.
Patti left, and Tsubaki waited a while, then lifted the tray and flung everything in it across the tiled floor. She ducked into the cubicle and swung the door closed. Blue and red bottles bounced and skidded, and three rolled under a certain cubicle’s door.
“Oh no,” Tsubaki called anxiously. She turned the rushing water down to a quiet trickle. “Hello? Could somebody get those for me? Please, I don’t have any clothes on.”
A few moments passed. “Hello? Anyone there?”
A green bottle rolled under the door and stopped against her bare toes.
“Oh, thank you. Who is it?”
Ragged pink hair appeared over the door, and a pair of worried eyes. “Um. It’s me.”
“Crona! I didn’t know you were in here. Thank you, I didn’t want anyone to step on them by accident.”
Two more bottles rolled under the door. “What are they? They’re pretty.”
“They’re soaps, more like shampoo really. They smell wonderful. Here, try this one.” She uncapped a pink one and passed it over the door.
Pale fingers took it. “Oh. It’s…is it fruit or something?”
“Is it?” Tsubaki laughed. “I thought it was roses. I haven’t tried them all yet. Would you like that one? Or probably you’ve already had your shower.”
“No.” Crona’s voice was uncertain. Tsubaki cracked the door and looked through. Crona was still in her gym clothes, even her shoes, all of it soaking wet. Tsubaki didn’t bat an eye.
“You get a good, hot shower and I’ll bring your clothes to you. Where are they?”
Crona began to toe her waterlogged shoes off. “I think Soul might have them.”
Tsubaki paused in winding a towel around herself. “Soul took your clothes?”
“No, he was going to bring them to me. But that was another room.” Crona dragged her waterlogged shirt over her head and straightened, hair spiking out in all directions. “They might be there or in the locker room, I don’t know.” She pushed her shorts down and stepped out of them. “I didn’t want to shower because I didn’t want to take my clothes off.”
“They’re off now,” Tsubaki said reasonably. “And I have plenty of clothes I could loan to you. It’s no problem.”
“Thank you,” Crona said. “I’m really tired. Could you look at me?”
“Of course. Did you hurt yourself?”
“Here.” Crona gestured vaguely below her waist. “I think I’m a girl.”
Tsubaki looked where she was told. “Well, I’m hardly an expert, but I think you’re a girl, too.” She looked up and smiled at Crona. “Would you like me to scrub your back?”
***************************************************
"See, if she'd had, what, three arms or three eyes or bat wings or something--tilt your head up, like that, yeah."
"She does have bat wings. Ugh, you're sticking your finger up my nose."
"I'm just getting your nostrils, they're red. But you see what I'm saying, right? It's not the weirdness part that got to you. Hold on, I need to put some around your eyes." Liz dabbed cover stick under Maka's eyes and regarded her handiwork critically. "This really isn't your color."
"Liz? What have you done to my face?"
"Nothing, really. I think your eyes just need something now. What I'm saying is, I'm not trying to criticize, but you...tried to be brave, in a way that you don't know how to do yet. Both of you did. I'm not sure you and Crona wouldn't have flipped out, just from being naked in the same room. She's really shy. So are you."
"I'm a prude."
"Aaah, not really. I just said that to make you mad."
"No. I think I am."
"Fine. But you know, so is she, so you're kind of a matched set, right? You can be a pair of old ladies that shake their canes at the disgusting youth of tomorrow.”
The door creaked open behind them. “Hello?” Tsubaki called. Patti chimed in, “We’re all ready, who’s here?”
“Right, now be cool, don’t react,” Liz muttered to Maka, and turned around. “Hey, you oh my god, wow.”
Crona was dressed in Tsubaki’s extra clothes; a pale yellow top, loose but tied at the waist, and a long light green skirt. Her hair was brushed back from her forehead and mostly pinned down with silver barrettes. She wore a pair of sandals with intricate straps and buckles. The clothes didn’t fit well, and the colors made her vaguely reminiscent of Easter decorations, but she looked happy and serene.
Until she saw Maka, and her face froze in shock.
Patti grinned and put her head on one side. “Liz, did you do that? She looks like the guy from Clockwork Orange.”
“I’m not finished,” Liz protested.
“Only also, she’s pink.”
Maka cut in. “Hi, Crona! You look like a million dollars. Liz, what’d you do.”
“Nothing! You only have one eye drawn, that’s all.”
“And she’s totally covered in pink stuff.”
Maka got up. “Right, this is the fourth time I wash my face today.” She walked over to Crona. “You look really, really pretty,” she said firmly. “But you did in your old clothes, too.”
Crona was nearly speechless. Her face shone. “Thank you. Ah, Soul has them.”
“Soul took your clothes? I’ll kill him.”
“No, it’s not that…”
Liz got up and walked over to Tsubaki, who was regarding the proceedings with a mischievous gleam in her eye.
“Liz, did you do that on purpose?”
“Applied Misdirection,” Liz said. “It isn’t just for ninjas anymore.”