Chapter 2: Before

At first, nobody said anything. Not at all. They couldn't, for the shock was so incredible. They couldn't believe what she'd just said, and after all this time they'd known her, she tells them, but then they remembered they were her friends, but some were still bitter about this.

"Woah, woah, woah, woah, woah!" Stella shouted, as she flailed her arms in a disapproving fashion. "You've known us for over three years and you just now decide to share you're related to royalty?"

"Yah, and didn't you tell us you were from the Third Vector of the Binary Galaxy?" Musa asked, confused herself.

Tecna's voice was plain as she answered, "Zenith is the Third Vector of the Binary Galaxy."

"Oh," some of the girls said, starting to understand.

"In my realm, some people call it the Third Vector, others call it Zenith. It depends. People of higher society call it Zenith, while regular people call it the Third Vector." She hoped she didn't give away to much in her explanation, but the others seemed to forget when Bloom asked another question.

"So, exactly how is the princess your cousin anyway?"

"Well, my mother's older sister, Lera, is the queen."

The other girls looked up in more surprise at her response.

"So, your mother was a princess than?"

Tecna nodded. "Mm-hm. But, it doesn't matter really though. She was never going to have a chance at being queen. Aunt Lera is almost six years older than Mom."

"So, how often did you see Crystal growing up?"

Tecna hesitated again and explained: "All the time. You see, my parents are very important people and work in the court, so they raised me, my older brother Trey, and my baby sister Tammy in the palace. So, it's almost as if we were royalty growing up." She laughed. "It was Dad's joke to call me his little 'almost princess'."

The girls giggled momentarily and then turned back to their friend once they'd fully understood what she'd told them.

Musa was the first to react. "Wait, what? Didn't you tell me that you went to Alfea on a scholarship? Well, how can you be rich than?"

Tecna was ashamed again. "I told you a lot of things, but sixty-five and thirty-two hundredths of that isn't correct."

Layla whistled, trying not to make it sound as bad as it was. "Well, so, if that's how you really grew up, than why did you say so many things that weren't true?"

Tecna blushed. "Well, you see, when I was young, Crystal and I were inseparable, and when we were both fifteen-she's five months older than me-our parents decided we should start considering our education on how to be a fairy and that's how it started."

"Well, why did it start?"

She frowned again. "Truly, neither of us wanted to go at first because we'd been home schooled by private tutors in the palace our whole lives, and Crystal refused to go. After several attempts, my parents persuaded me into it, but I wasn't sure and had a long talk with Crystal about it, which pretty much has led us up to what we're doing now."

Nearly five years earlier, Tecna sat in the sitting area of her palace bedroom along with her cousin, and best friend, Princess Crystal. The room was quite beautiful and big as well. It was nearly eight times the size of Tecna's room in her dorm at Alfea.

"I can't do this Cryssie," Tecna was saying, pacing around the large room. "I can't just go like this and leave you to go to some school where I don't know anybody. What the heck was I thinking?"

Crystal shook her head. "Relax Tec," she reassured her, "you'll be fine. You're a likeable person, and you're much better at magic than I am." She added a laugh to that statement. "I can't even transform."

"That's not really important," her cousin pointed out, continuing to pace in frustration. "You're a princess and live in a huge palace armed with guards. You don't need to learn how to transform and fight for yourself, you'll always be guarded."

Crystal nodded, not denying it. "But, it makes me look lazy to not even try to learn how to use my powers."

"No you're not, and trust me, I'll be back within three months, for sure."

"But, what if you make new friends and they miss you?"

Tecna froze. "You're right. What am I going to do about that? They'll remember me." She turned it over in her mind for a few seconds and then it came to her. She smiled. "But what if it wasn't me who went! Yes, Crystal! That's it!"

Crystal didn't understand. "What, are you paying somebody to take your spot or something?"

Tecna shook her head. "No. I'm still going, but technically I'm also not." When her cousin still gave her a look of confusion, she tried to explain, "Alfea will be expecting a new freshman soon, but it won't be Tecna of Zenith."

"Who's it going to be?"

She smiled and replied, "Tecna of the Third Vector of the Binary Galaxy."

The Winx girls stared in awe. Their friend, their good friend, had really said that? Just to prove it, she'd told them she had 'tapes' of important conversations in case she wanted to look back at them. She'd played this scene, and they had to believe that this really truly had happened.

What really had shocked the girls was not only that fact that their friend knew the princess of her realm and was related to her, but just Tecna herself.

She still spoke with her thick accent, but in the clip, she didn't once point out anything she would classify as 'logical' and they never saw her put out some type of gadget at all. From how they'd gotten to know her over this time, that was new.

Her clothes were different as well. Instead of something purple or green as she usually wore around them, she was clothed in a small skirt, a midriff orange top, and her pink hair that they'd known was short reached all the way to her shoulders.

"So, that's what you used to look, right?"

Sheepishly, the fairy of technology nodded as she blushed, covering her face with her hands. "Looking back at it all, it's amazing that I really used to look like that."

"It's amazing to us to," Layla said, still gawking. "So, what happened after that?"

Tecna thought. "Well, then I started to prepare for Alfea since the first day was only two months away at the time. And, you girls have no idea, I had a lot to do in order to get ready."

"What did you have to do?"

"Well, at first it was merely the obvious. First things first, I spelled my hair short. I'd wanted to do it for a while actually, but never knew if it was a good time, and since I was going under a new identity, now was the time."

The pink haired girl continued to explain how next she'd bought new clothes that were similar to those she'd seen the more regular people of the realm dress in. At first, she thought these new ensembles would be uncomfortable, but in reality, they were the most comfortable clothes she'd ever had.

"And what made it even better," she explained, "was that though I hadn't worn clothes like this since Mom and Dad would never have let me wear that in public so that I wouldn't embarrass my family's reputation, but since I was going to be on my own, it didn't matter. I actually really liked the outfits to."

She then said that after that came studying so she could help create her character more effectively since she was going for more of the whole smart techno fairy who was also kind of a computer geek.

"It actually wasn't that hard to study, and I knew I could pull of the techno geek thing easily because well, let's face: I always was a techno geek. I just never let anyone who didn't know me that well be aware of it."

The girls laughed. Maybe their friend hadn't changed that much for them after all?

But, suddenly Tecna got serious and looked upset again. "But, next came the hardest part."

"What was it?" One of them asked.

"Well, I didn't want anybody at Alfea to know who I really was, so…After figuring it out, I hacked into the registration forms online and changed it so that it said I was on a scholarship(I even applied for one, which I got), I wasn't from an important family, and went to regular schools growing up, which I hadn't."

The Winx Club was incredibly amazed. Of all the people to be that desperate to not have people who you are, Tecna did this?

"You did what?" Musa asked.

Tecna hung her head in shame once again. "I know it wasn't right, and my parents figured it out when I came home on the Day of the Rose freshman year anyway. And they also knew about how I'd downloaded the map of the interschool tunnels that one time we snuck into Cloud Tower, so yeah, they were really mad, and for once, happy that I hadn't kept my real identity, because if I had, everyone in my realm would've heard about it."

"So, what'd you do after that?"

"Well, then I went to Alfea."

Bloom turned to the technology fairy. "So, can you show us what you were really like on the first day? Like, one of your recordings?"

Tecna nodded. "If you say so girls, but I warn you, there's a lot in here that you may be offended of, so do you still want to watch?"

"Of course," Layla quickly replied.

Hesitantly, she 'pressed play'. "Here you go."

The next chapter is told of how Tecna saw her first day at Alfea, and, just for you people on fan fiction, it includes the moments the real episode neglected like: When Musa introduced herself; Tecna and Musa unpacked in their new room; how Bloom and Stella explained what was going on the other girls. All coming soon in the next chapter.