Escape Room – Chapter 4

Those shapes were absolutely important, Alecia was convinced. Serena seemed to have the magnets under control – or, at the very least, she was concentrating quite hard on them, and Alecia didn’t want to interrupt – so Alecia decided it would be best for her to concentrate on those instead. If she could figure them out, then maybe she could announce it Serena, prove that she was a useful member of the team, and that her decision to climb up onto the high chair hadn’t been as pointless as the other girl had been convinced it would be.

“Okay,” she said to herself, closing her eyes to help her remember what she’d seen from the tray, looking down. “Where to start?”

The shapes were scattered around the floor, seemingly at random. They were all pretty basic: squares, triangles, circles, diamonds, and stars, colored in purple, orange, pink, and a soft gray. Not every shape came in every color, however… She might have wondered if she was wrong about that, if she was misremembering, but her mental image was as clear as a bell.

In fact, taking a moment to count them, she realized there were only three of each shape, which, obviously, meant it was impossible for any of them to come in all four colors. Was there something to that? Was it worth deducing what colors were missing from which shape, and trying to work out what that could mean? The thought of it made her head hurt, to be honest…

She opened her eyes and glanced over at the fridge again, and the magnets. For a split second, looking at the blue and red magnets, she felt the synapses in her brain firing, telling her that those could still be connected to the shapes after all. Blue and red made purple, after all, and there were purple shapes… And red and yellow made orange…

What about the pink and gray shapes, though? She frowned, the brilliant plan forming in her brain quickly grinding to a halt. There were no white letters to combine with the red ones, and also no black ones to go with the equally non-existent white ones. Unless that, in and of itself, was the clue? Was she supposed to disregard those colors altogether?

She was getting ahead of herself… She still didn’t know what they were even meant to do with the shapes. She walked over to the closest one, a purple diamond, and knelt down, taking a closer look at it. It really didn’t seem any different from the rest of the white tile floor around it, other than the design, and, running her hand over it didn’t do anything either.

“What are you?” she asked out loud. She wandered over to the next, a gray circle, and found exactly the same thing there, nothing that made it stand out from the diamond. If the colors were they key, she had no clue how, or why.

Why it took her so long to think of it, she didn’t know, but finally, she decided to step onto the shape, tentatively putting one Velcro-sneakered toe onto it. It felt the same as the floor she’d been walking on this whole time… Of course, the shapes were a part of the floor, and they’d been tromping all over them since they arrived here.

It wasn’t until she put both feet onto the circle, however, that something happened. It was subtle, and, if she hadn’t been desperate to find anything to indicate she was on the right track with her hunch, she might not have noticed it, but she was sure it had happened, and stepping off and back on confirmed it. If she fully stood on it, rather than just quickly stepping on it as she walked, it sank down, ever so slightly.

That was it! She gave a little jump, feeling proud of herself. It was a trigger for some kind of secret passage, like old castles in movies had, or something like that! She glanced around the room to see what had opened up, but as far as she could tell, nothing had changed. Even stepping off and back on didn’t work.

And then she went back to the diamond and did the same to it, her heart sinking a bit along with the shape. Of course it wasn’t that simple… She should have known that she hadn’t just lucked into picking the one shape that happened to be the solution. Maybe, though, if she found all the ones that did this, that would be useful, and help her narrow down which were important, and which weren’t.

It didn’t take long for her to realize that it wasn’t only a few of the shapes, it was seemingly all of them. The same thing happened with each one, nothing different to make any of them stand out. She almost gave up, but by that point, she was too stubborn, searching now to see if she could find one that didn’t move under her weight.

She didn’t, and, while she didn’t take the time to do a full scan of the room every time, nothing obvious opened or unlocked after she’d stepped on all of them. Maybe it was a combination thing, and she had to step on them in the right order… But there were fifteen of them, and the thought of trying every possible variation, and keeping track of which she’d done and which she hadn’t, made her head spin.

Or maybe it wasn’t that difficult… Maybe it wasn’t a sequence of fifteen, but a combination of three. This place had been so insistent that they have at least three people to do this room… There had to be a reason for that, didn’t there?

“It has now been ten minutes,” the woman’s voice announced from out of nowhere, making Alecia flinch. Ten minutes?! Already?! She had taken quite a while, examining the tiles… She glanced up at poor Julianne, still trapped in her high chair, no closer to being released. Alecia didn’t want to leave her there, of course, but she also didn’t want to find out what was going to happen if she failed to get out of here, and she had no clue how to free her friend yet. If it came down to it… Could they get away without her?

She toddled over to the stool, dragging it back away from the fridge, and a pouting Serena, and over to the closest shape to it, an orange star, watching it carefully as she set the stool down on it. The star didn’t budge, and she spent another moment or two adjusting the stool, ensuring all of the stool’s legs were within the borders of the star, wishing it had been any of the other shapes to make it a little easier. No matter what she did, the stool didn’t seem to work.

All three of them were going to have to be down here, on the floor, to do this… Serena had been right; they were going to have to open the lock holding Julianne in the high chair. And, hopefully, they’d find something to tell them which of the shapes they’d need to stand on, too, because even after Julianne was free, and Serena was done with whatever she was doing, trying out all the combinations blindly would still take a long time. But where should she even start looking to find out how to do any of that?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Serena groaned, her brain aching as she stared at the letters, trying to will them to do what they, so far, had refused to do, to fall into any kind of useful pattern, moving them all around one another, searching for a word that would tell her what to do next.

“Oh!” her eyes widened as she saw something start to form, eyes darting over to a letter she was sure she’d seen. Sure enough, it was there, and she dragged it over, adding in another.

“Pagoda,” she read out, feeling proud of herself for managing to spot it at last. It wasn’t the most common word in the world, which made it the perfect one to be used in this puzzle, and soothed her ego a hair for how long it had taken to spot it.

But… What did it mean?! There was nothing here that could be considered a pagoda, and she had no clue how it could even connect to anything in the room… Perhaps there was more to it than that, another word that would clarify things… The letters she had left were practically useless, though.

“Ugh!” her victory quickly turned into a defeat – or, at the very least, a stalemate – she plopped down, diaper crinkling beneath her as she sat on the floor, pouting. Why was this so hard?! All she had to do was find the word hiding in these letters, and she was failing miserably! What was she doing wrong?! She really wished she could ask Julianne, to see if she’d encountered anything like this in another escape room…

This wasn’t like other escape rooms, of course… She was sure Julianne would have mentioned if being shrunk to the size of a toddler was common practice in these sorts of places. So maybe she needed to think about this differently… This place was treating them like babies, so, perhaps, she was thinking too hard about these letters… Was there something simpler in there?

“Moo,” she mused, moving the letters together. “Moo-moo…” Was there a cow in the room somewhere? A toy, obviously, but a toy cow certainly seemed more likely to exist here than a pagoda…

And then, finally, she saw that she could actually make the word using only yellow letters, pushing aside the blue O’s that had snuck in there. Were the colors important? She rolled her eyes at herself; the better question was, why hadn’t she assumed that was the case from the start?! She’d been happy to think that the multiple colors were there for aesthetic, to give it more playful vibe, but you could never trust that something in an escape room was just coincidence…

Splitting the letters up by color instantly made them feel more manageable, even if, in practice, it didn’t help as much as she might have hoped. There were still too many O’s, too many of what had to be decoys, since there was nothing she could think of that would make sense using all of them. “Go, go?” she read out the blue letters. Did they need to move fast? Absolutely… They all knew there was a time limit.

“Gag?” the green letters seemed to spell. Was that connected to the high chair, and the baby food Julianne was being fed? How? Did they need to have her eat a specific flavor? “Pay?” was the best she could come up with for the red letters, and yellow brought her right back to “Moo-moo,” or, perhaps, “boo-boo.” Did they need to find a cow and pay it something? Or did they maybe need a band-aid, and that was their payment to… something else?

“I don’t get it!” she stomped, feeling so incredibly stupid and overwhelmed, and almost ready to throw in the towel… After being obsessed with them for so long, was she just too dumb for escape rooms?!

“It has now been ten minutes,” the woman’s voice boomed.

She was still on her first puzzle! She was never going to get out of here! She crossed her arms sulkily, not wanting to have to use a hint already, but feeling totally stumped, and too upset about it to react when Alecia came to take her stool.

She glanced up at the letters one more time, sick of the sight of them, yet knowing that if she gave up on them, she would have wasted all that time for nothing. And something clicked in her brain.

She’d still been thinking too mature… The answer was simple, if she was willing to go back a bit further. She knew, in her heart, that this time, she’d done it, confirmed by the fact that, for the first time, she’d used every single letter.

“Goo-goo ga-ga,” she read out, feeling silly and proud at the same time. “Diapy boom-boom.”

Her pride quickly vanished when, as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she felt her knees bend, and her body begin to push, letting out a soft grunt against her will. “Stop!” she squealed, horrified… Or tried to, at least. Instead, she heard an unintelligible bit of baby babble in her ears, not too dissimilar from the first two words in the puzzle’s solution.

“What’s happening?” she attempted to ask, those words coming out the same way, and interrupted by another grunt as she was reminded of what else was going on, her eyes widening as a warm, mushy mass formed in the seat of her diaper. The question was pointless anyway… She knew exactly what was happening… She was filling her pants like the toddler she was the size of, unable to even speak like a grown-up as she helplessly felt her diaper balloon behind her, growing larger and heavier and stinkier with every passing second, no matter what she did to try to halt it…

She should have known better… She knew there were usually red herrings in escape rooms… Julianne had told her about them. The magnets had been too obvious, she realized too late, fighting in vain to make her tummy stop pushing, nothing seeming to work. Maybe if she’d had some more first-hand experience, she would have recognized the danger… Normally, though, a red herring just wasted your time. In this room, apparently, they could do much more than that…

“Uh-oh!” the woman’s voice returned. “Looks like somebody had a little accident!” Serena blushed bright red, tugging at the skirt of her dress, though she doubted it would matter… It hadn’t been long enough to begin with, and now that her diaper was very full, and sagging lower with the weight she’d just added, there was no chance it could do the job. Her only hope was that Alecia wouldn’t look her way, would assume that it had been Julianne… Because, as an older sister, Serena had no doubt Alecia was capable of recognizing a dirty diaper on sight, even across the room. She couldn’t let that cheerleader see her in poopy pants! But, thanks to her outfit, she also didn’t have a choice in the matter…

“Don’t worry,” the woman taunted. “If you need a change, all you have to do is ask… Oh, but you can’t do that, either, can you? That’s all right… Just do your best, and I’ll figure it out. It’ll only cost you one of your hints.”

Serena whimpered, squirming in her squishy pants. She did very much want out of this, to escape the humiliating thing she’d just done… Did she really want to waste one of their hints on it, though? If they ended up needing help to get out of the room, and weren’t able to get it because she’d wanted a clean diaper…

She groaned, wrinkling her nose. It was hard to imagine continuing on this way, but they were nowhere near getting out. She needed to get back to work, if she could possibly concentrate on anything while stuck in a poopy diaper. What was she going to do?!

Should Serena…

Ask for a change?
Check under the sink?
Check the sink?
Try to open the fridge?
Look at the picture books?
Look at the pots and pans?
Examine the baby gate more closely?
Or ask for a hint?

And should Alecia…

Check under the sink?
Check the sink itself?
Try to open the fridge?
Look at the picture books?
Look at the pots and pans?
Examine the baby gate?
Or ask for a hint?

This decision has already been made, but if you’d like to catch up on the story, and help decide where it goes next, you can find it, and other exclusive stories, at my Patreon!

Escape Room – Chapter 3

The magnets, Serena thought to herself. There was no way those weren’t a clue, at the very least… Honestly, the more she thought about it, the more certain she was that they’d be the key to all of this, that they’d definitely spell out something that she’d need to solve this room.

“I think we ought to…” she began to say, turning to wave Alecia over, only to see that the cheerleader had, indeed, ignored her, and was dragging the footstool over to the high chair.

Serena glared at the other girl’s back, and the puffy rear of her fully-exposed diaper, pouting ever so slightly… Of course, she knew that she didn’t have any first-hand experience with this, didn’t really know for sure what she was doing, but she cared more about this than Alecia had, at least before they’d all wound up in diapers…

“Fine,” she huffed to herself. If Alecia wanted to waste her time, that was fine with her… Serena didn’t need her! She hadn’t wanted her to come in the first place! She could solve it all on her own, while Alecia messed around with something that was clearly pointless until they got more information. She’d probably have only gotten in the way, anyway!

It was possible that the magnets could have spelled out the combination to the lock on the high chair, too, and they could work together; Serena didn’t particularly want to share the glory, but she also didn’t love the thought of climbing up the high chair on her own, either, and Alecia was already mostly there, to Serena’s surprise. Then again, she was a cheerleader… She certainly got much more exercise than Serena did on a regular basis.

Serena scanned the front of the fridge, looking at what letters she had to work with, but it didn’t take long for her hopes in that regard to be dashed. There were a decent number of letters to go off of, but none of them looked like they could spell out anything even close to any numbers, much less a whole combination, unless the solution was a bunch of 0’s, since she had plenty of O’s to go around, and they could have been an analogue for that numeral… That wasn’t much of a puzzle, however.

“What kind of combination is it?” she called, furrowing her brow as she stared up at the magnets. She didn’t really think she was on the right track, but there was a chance she was thinking about this the wrong way… “I mean, is it numbers, letters… pictures, I don’t know?”

She didn’t get a reply, and she rolled her eyes. Fine… If Alecia didn’t want to help, then she’d do it by herself after all. It shouldn’t be too difficult… Having physical letters there, and in a form where she could re-arrange them at will, should make it a snap to figure it out!

Her one obstacle was the fact that some of the letters were out of her reach. Try as she might, stretching up on the tip-toes of her Mary Janes, blushing as she realized she was surely making her dress ride up and show off even more of her diaper than was already peeking out from her dress, she couldn’t make herself tall enough to slide the last few down to join the rest that she’d pulled together towards the bottom of the fridge.

It was only a few… A pair of G’s, in green and blue, a red P, and a yellow M. She could keep them in mind, work them into her solution… It would be so much easier if she had them with the others, though. She glanced over, saw the stool sitting at the foot of the high chair. She knew Alecia was using it… But she’d put it back! And she was doing something that might actually help them in the long run!

She toddled over, shouting upwards, “I’m gonna borrow this for a minute!”, not waiting for a response. She wasn’t sure if she’d have gotten one anyway… She could see Alecia messing around up there, seemingly trying to push the bottle away from Julianne’s mouth or something, which, Serena had to admit, wasn’t a horrible plan… Even if they needed the combination to get her out of the chair, having somebody with experience with escape rooms sitting up there, yelling out advice, would have been nice.

She grabbed the footstool and gave it a yank, squeaking in surprise as she discovered how heavy it was. She’d assumed Alecia was stronger than her, but was it really this big of a difference?! The other girl had barely seemed to struggle with it! That made Serena want to hide how difficult it was for her, though there wasn’t much she could do about it… The stool was fairly big – at least, compared with her shrunken size – and sturdy, so she didn’t have to worry about it collapsing on her when she used it or anything… It also made it a challenge to drag it back across the room towards the fridge, however, grunting and groaning as she went, and practically collapsing when she got it to her destination, flopping down onto her padded bottom with a loud crinkle to catch her breath for a second or two.

That had driven home what the transformation they’d gone through had done to her, how tiny and weak and helpless she was now… She really did feel like she belonged in this absurd outfit, and this diaper, if she’d had so much trouble just moving a footstool… But no, she didn’t have time to feel sorry for herself! She had to get to work if they were going to get out of here in time!

She clambered up onto the stool, grabbing the last few letters, feeling very satisfied as she stepped back, smiling, to look at all of them at once. They were… A mess. Serena frowned, having hoped that some sort of instinct would take over when she got this far, or that the answer would jump out at her when all the letters were together, and yet, if anything, she was more confused than ever.

“There has to be something,” she reminded herself. There were just so many O’s, though… What word could need that many O’s?! They were in a couple different colors, too… Did that mean anything? Blue and yellow… She slid all of them next to each other, alternating each color, but that still left everything else sitting beneath it, jumbled together, refusing to coalesce into anything meaningful.

Or so it seemed… But, if everything was that simple, it wouldn’t be much of a challenge to escape, would it? And the more Serena stared at the letters, the more certain she was that this puzzle was important, and that, if she gave it another chance, she could solve it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It wasn’t much of a choice for Alecia, either; there was no way she was going to let her friend be stuck in the high chair like that, no matter what that little know-it-all Serena said!

She waddled over to the footstool, not used to the bulk of the diaper between her legs, the feel of the plastic on her thighs… Her cheerleading uniform was, to be fair, pretty skimpy, yet she felt far more exposed in this outfit than she ever had in that. Maybe it had to do with the fact that the diaper was, technically, meant to be underwear, not pants, and, as short as her cheerleading skirt was, she was never really flashing her panties, much less walking around with them fully exposed, thanks to her bloomers…

Or maybe she was still reeling from the sight of those diapers, the same ones she’d seen her baby sister, Rebecca, wear – that she’d changed her into and out of herself – not so long ago. There was no doubt in her mind that these were identical, that they couldn’t be just well-made replicas, that the woman turning giant wasn’t some trick of the light or whatever… She and the others had truly been shrunken down to the size of toddlers, the size of her Rebecca… Or, rather, even smaller, since she’d outgrown these diapers already.

The stool was heavy, but not unmanageable, though she couldn’t quite manage to answer Serena’s question while she was in the middle of moving it, and the girl was too impatient to wait. It was just the right size, too, exactly as Alecia had thought it would be, letting her climb on top of it, and, from it, onto the footrest of the high chair.

“Hold on, Juli,” she said, more to herself than her friend. “I’m on my way…”

She’d never been the best at rock-climbing walls, but she had done them a few times, and this was far simpler… From the footrest, she just had to pull herself up onto a support bar a bit higher up, and from there she could reach the tray. It still took some strength to drag herself up there, and concentration to be sure she didn’t slip, prompting her to ignore whatever it was Serena was yelling at her… But it was definitely doable. For her, anyway… She suspected Serena would have a far harder time with it, though perhaps she was being unfair.

She got to her feet, the size of the tray making her feel much smaller than she knew she was. The high chair must have been bigger than a normal one, she thought, because even as little as she knew she had to be, it seemed like she had far more space up there than she would have expected, despite all the bottles and jars up there with her.

Speaking of them, she could see Julianne squirming in her seat, a bottle of juice pushed firmly into her mouth as she whimpered and struggled. “I’ve got you, Juli!” Serena declared, plowing across the tray, knocking over baby food and drinks as she went, not caring about the mess she made as she headed for her friend…

And then, out of nowhere, one of the bottles flew upwards, slamming into her face. Alecia gasped, feeling her mouth filling with warm milk as she tried in vain to shove it away, the nipple having lodged itself firmly between her lips. Beyond it, she could see the other things she’d jostled jiggling, turning themselves upwards, plastic spoons dipping into jars, starting to float towards her…

Had she made a mistake?! Was she going to be trapped up here, getting force-fed right next to Julianne, stuffed with mashed peas and carrots and prunes until…?! No! There was no way this place would go that far! Except… Already, from the bit of milk that she’d swallowed, she could feel a fullness forming in her bladder… And, like it or not, there had to be a reason they’d all been put into these diapers…

“I’m gonna borrow this for a minute!” Alecia heard Serena, and attempted to yell down at her to help – although, to be fair, she wasn’t sure what Serena would be able to do – but all that did was make a few bubbles in her milk as it continued to drain.

This couldn’t happen… Becca didn’t need her diapers anymore; Alecia wasn’t about to let herself be reduced to them! She shook her head, grabbing at the bottle with her other hand, not caring how much it made her look like her sister in her younger days, when she was too uncoordinated to hold her drink with a single hand. She shoved it away once, twice, and then, finally, it burst free, sending a spray of milk into the air as it clattered to the tray.

Alecia glanced behind her only briefly, to be certain there was somewhere for her Veclro sneakers to land as she backed away, then looked up, ready to bat aside one spoon, then another, as she made her way closer to Julianne, wiping her chin with a blush, feeling a few dribbles of milk there. After everything, she didn’t see anything there, no way to get Julianne loose, except for the lock. Like everything else, it was huge, the numbers on it bright and cheerful looking somehow, almost in a mocking way, as if it were just keeping her away from some cookies until snacktime, rather than holding her friend captive.

She yanked on the lock, but it was too sturdy for her to hope to break, and the few experimental turns she was able to give the dials did nothing, obviously… She would have had to be extraordinarily lucky to simply guess the combination, especially when she was trying to dodge the spoons at the same time.

Had Serena been right? Had this been a waste of time? Alecia fidgeted, that hour they’d been given to get out of here suddenly feeling much shorter than it had before. “I-I’m sorry,” she told Julianne, shaking her head. “I-I don’t know what else to do… I’ll be back, okay?”

Julianne managed a small, reassuring smile between bites, which was all Alecia needed to confirm she was making the right choice by dashing back through the minefield of babyfood and bottles, swatting them aside as she made her way to the far edge of the tray, peering down…

She paused for a moment, looking down, the whole feeding room laid out beneath her, yet what really captured her attention was the colorful shapes on the floor. She didn’t know why, exactly, but those struck her as important. She took a deep breath, concentrating on them, doing her best to memorize where each of them was before scrambling back down the outside of the high chair. The footstool was gone, though getting down without it wasn’t nearly as big of a deal as getting up.

She hopped up from her tumble, peering behind her to be sure she hadn’t been followed, then brushed herself off. She didn’t feel like she’d done much at all, since she hadn’t accomplished her real goal of getting Julianne free, yet she was definitely intrigued by the shapes… There had to be some meaning to them… But what? She could try looking at them more closely, except she had a feeling that, in and of itself, wouldn’t be enough… She turned towards Serena to see if she had any ideas, only to find the girl still engrossed, moving the magnets back and forth uncertainly.

She could go help her, she supposed… If they put their heads together with that, they could then move on to working on what the shapes did. Or she could go investigate something else on her own, prove to Serena that she didn’t need her… The magnets on the fridge were different colors, too, like the shapes, so there could have been a connection there… Now that she’d seen them all from above, however, Alecia knew that none of the shapes shared colors with any of the magnets.

Alecia looked around the room, tapping her foot, reminding herself that she didn’t have time to waste being indecisive… She needed to decide what she was going to do next now!

So, what will it be? Will Alecia…

Help Serena with the magnets?
Check under the sink?
Check the sink itself?
Push past Serena to try to open the fridge?
Look at the picture books?
Look at the pots and pans?
Examine the baby gate?
Give the shapes on the floor a closer look?
Or ask for a hint?

This decision has already been made, but if you’d like to catch up on the story, and help decide where it goes next, you can find it, and other exclusive stories, at my Patreon!

Violet’s Easter Outfit

“Are you sure it’s okay, Grandpa?” Violet asked. “I don’t want to be any trouble…”

“Well, of course, dear,” he replied. “If you want me to talk to your school and see about getting you back into the dorm, though, I could…”

“No,” Violet shook her head quickly. “You don’t have to do that, Grandpa! I don’t think it would make any difference anyway… My RA doesn’t like me for some reason, so she’s happy to see me gone.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” he told her, giving her a hug. “How could anybody not like you?”

There were, in fact, plenty of reasons; Violet was right, however. Having her grandfather talk to anybody at her college wouldn’t do anything to get her back in the dorm, because she was no longer enrolled there. Her grades had just fallen too far, and it had come down to either dropping out, or failing out in the next few weeks, and the former had felt slightly less embarrassing.

She wasn’t about to tell him that, though, and she definitely didn’t want to tell her parents, which was why she had decided to come to her Grandpa instead of them. They’d ask more questions, be more suspicious about her motives for moving back in when she’d been so excited to go live in the dorms, away from them… But Grandpa had always spoiled her, and he would definitely believe whatever she said, so she could take it easy here until she was ready. Plus, Grandpa lived much closer to her school, so it made more sense for her to pretend she was only there because of a misunderstanding at the dorm than it would if she went all the way back home.

“We’re going to have so much fun together,” she smiled. All she could think of was how, when she was younger, she’d spend a week or two every summer with her grandparents, and how amazing that had been… This was going to be like that the whole time!

“Of course we will,” he nodded. “Now, I do have some rules that you have to follow while you’re here…”

“I know, I know,” Violet said. “I remember! Don’t worry, I won’t keep you up too late, and I won’t make a mess…” Even those, she knew, weren’t hard and fast rules, as she’d broken them plenty of times during those summers. He was a big softie, and he’d never dream of yelling at her, much less disciplining her… She was his youngest granddaughter, after all!

“It’s not as simple as…” he started.

“I’m going to respect your house, and you,” she rolled her eyes. “And I’ll help out around the house… All of that! I’m not a kid anymore!” This was probably about how she’d gotten a little crazy that last summer, knocked his TV over… But that wasn’t going to happen again!

“You’re always a kid to me, Violet,” he told her. “It doesn’t matter how old you are, or how long you go to school, I’ll always see you as my sweet little granddaughter.”

Violet couldn’t help but giggle. “That’s me,” she smirked. “Just a sweet, innocent little girl…”

The Hard Way

“Excuse me?” Power Girl called out as she came in for a landing, frowning as she saw that, indeed, her information had been correct. “Who exactly do you think you are?”

It was, she felt, a totally fair question. Thanks to the multiverse, and all the ensuing shenanigans that could cause, she couldn’t automatically assume that this was anything sinister… Her instincts, however, were screaming that something was off, and the scene in front of her was certainly uncanny.

The imposter turned, its motions strange somehow, not quite natural, in a way that put Kara on edge. It didn’t prove that they were evil, or even had ill intentions… But it did put her on guard. “Who are you?” she demanded, more forcefully.

Not a word came out of the imposter’s mouth. There was a chance that it was her from a different universe, here to warn her of something, or ask for her help… She didn’t want to jump to any conclusions. The longer she stared, though, the less likely that sounded. Why wouldn’t the imposter have spoken up by now? Why was she just standing there, staring?

And why did it look the way it did? It was a good copy, for the most part, which was one reason for Kara wanting to give her benefit of the doubt, but it wasn’t perfect… For one thing, the hair wasn’t the right color at all, brown instead of blonde. That was something that could be changed easily, obviously, and that on its own wasn’t enough to prove anything… That, combined with the weird way that the imposter moved, its silence, however, did make her almost positive that this wasn’t a friendly visit.

“I’m going to ask you one more time,” Kara stepped closer. “Who are you, really?”

Suddenly, the imposter’s body jerked forward, throwing a punch straight at Power Girl’s face. Kara stepped back, avoiding it without a problem, even managing to get in a pose, hands on her hips as she gave the imposter a coy smile. “That’s not a very nice way to introduce yourself,” she said. “All I want to know is your name.”

The imposter shook its head, ever so slightly, its lips moving in an unnerving manner; after that first attack, Kara wasn’t going to fall for that, wasn’t about to move closer to see if she could work out what – if anything – it was trying to say. It was probably a trick, something that seemed more plausible the longer this encounter went on.

“I’ll give you one more chance,” Power Girl declared. “You can tell me what you’re doing here, you can leave… Or we can do things the hard way. It’s up to you.”

The imposter lunged at her again, flailing wildly. It was almost laughable to call it an attack, but the intentions were very clear. “All right, then,” Kara shrugged, clenching her fists. “The hard way it is.”

Kara was surprised as the next swing came, much harder and faster. “Oh, are you done playing around now?” she raised an eyebrow. “Trying to lull me into a false sense of security, huh? Well, fine… I guess I won’t play anymore, either.”

There was definitely still some awkwardness in the imposter’s movements, but it was almost like it was getting used to its shape, growing more familiar with how to use it. Was it a shapeshifter, borrowing her form for some nefarious purpose? The precursor to an invasion of body snatchers? She wished she knew, to give herself more of an idea of what to prepare for… If it wasn’t going to talk to her, however, there wasn’t a lot she could do, other than beat it and hope it would be more receptive to her questions then.

Or more receptive to someone’s questions… She had other things to take care of, so she’d be more than happy to drop the imposter off the person who had tipped her off. She’d requested Power Girl drop off whatever she found at her headquarters, if she turned out to be right, and she was surely more equipped for extracting information than Kara.

Could it be copying her as it watched her fight? Learning her moves? The thought made her uncomfortable, made the possibility that this was a part of something bigger feel more real… If she didn’t win, if she let this thing get away, then who knew what would happen? It could keep traveling around, battling other superheroes, copying their techniques until it was unstoppable…

That made her all the more determined to win, using all of her Kryptonian strength, especially once she realized that the imposter could take it, that whoever, or whatever, it was was shockingly resilient. Thankfully, it didn’t appear to be able to fly – though she did see it try a time or two, after she’d done it, appearing to hover in the air for a moment or two before its feet returned to the ground.

In the end, while it did take much longer than Kara anticipated, and wore her out more than she would have expected, thanks to how hard a task it was to put the imposter down, and convince it to stay there, she did win, carrying her defeated foe back to her informant. “Be careful,” she warned. “She’s tougher than she looks.”

“She looks pretty tough,” her informant said. “I mean… She look like you, so…” Kara chuckled, not above letting herself enjoy a little flattery, especially after that victory. “Point taken, though. Good work.”

Kara nodded, flying off to continue her patrol. It might have been a bit reckless, not giving herself time to rest, but it was unlikely that she would be up against another battle like that today, and the people of the city needed her. Foiling a robbery or stopping a mugging would be child’s play compared to what she’d already done, even if it was a hair more difficult while she was so tired.

She didn’t expect to hear anything back about the imposter for a while, potentially a few days; to her surprise, her informant contacted her later that day, asked her to meet back at the same place where she’d had the fight.

Power Girl returned to the park, even more stunned by what she was when her informant arrived. “Wait,” she couldn’t help smirking. “Is that her?”