"You are to stop experimenting on Akko, this instant," were the words Diana said to Sucy the second she walked into her room.
"Come in, I guess," Sucy said, not bothering to turn away from her current experiment (something involving a purple mushroom, a pink-colored liquid, and a bag of peanuts).
"I'm serious, Miss Manbavaran."
"What, because you switched to last names after being on a first name basis for three months?" Sucy asked, sprinkling the mushroom with a handful of peanuts.
"Yesterday, Akko couldn't take any notes in Numerology because something you fed her made her temporarily deaf."
"So what? She's just been copying all of your notes ever since you two started going out," Sucy said as she poured the liquid over the mushroom and peanuts.
"The day before that, Akko spent all of lunch vomiting out a giant worm."
"For all you know, she just ate some bad potatoes," Sucy said, poking her mushroom with a stick as the peanuts started growing hair.
"The day before that, you gave Akko a potion that made her think she was invisible, and if Lotte didn't catch her in time, she would have started running around school naked!"
"I'm guessing that one made you mad because you're the only allowed to see her like that?" Sucy asked as the hairy peanuts wrapped themselves around the mushroom.
"How can you-we haven't even-that's not the point!" Diana shouted, completely red in the face. "Look, Manbavaran, I refuse to stand by and just let you use Akko as your personal guinea pig!"
"Want to take her place, then?"
"Pardon?" Sucy got up from her desk (Diana could see that the mushroom had turned into a small cube of hair), walked over to her bed, and pulled out a box from underneath it. The box, as Diana observed, was filled with numerous bottles that, themselves, were filled with liquids of varying colors.
"These are all the potions I've been working on the last week. I haven't tested them out on Akko yet because it's a big batch and I figured 'Hey, might as well try them all out in one go.'"
"You've got some-" Sucy put a finger in front of Diana's face, cutting her off.
"She's not going to test them out, though. You are, Diana," Sucy said with a sharp, toothy grin across her face.
"I'm going to do what, exactly?" Diana asked, her eyebrow raised in a quizzical manner.
"Be my guinea pig. Try out all of the potions in this box, right here and now."
"Are you insane?! I've seen what just one of your concoctions can do, and you want me to try… a dozen?!"
"You see that haircube on my desk? That's an artificial panacea, strong enough to nullify the effects of anything I've made. If it gets to be too much for you, just take the panacea and we're done. However, if you can get through everything in the box without doing that, I won't use Akko as a guinea pig for the rest of the semester."
"Seriously?"
"Seriously." Diana just stared at Sucy for a bit. Out of all the people she had made friends with in conjunction to becoming friends with Akko, Sucy was the one who was the hardest to trust. Even Amanda, for all of her abrasiveness, was at least obvious with her intentions. Sucy, meanwhile, was completely unpredictable; nothing she did at one moment gave any indication of what she'd do the next, and the same went for anything she said.
Still, if there's even a chance of keeping Akko a little bit safe… "We have a deal."
1.
"Excellent. Now drink this," Sucy said, handing Diana a bottle of a clear-colored liquid.
"None of these will kill me, right?" Diana asked.
"Akko's still alive, isn't she?"
"That's not really the best answer, but I can't really back down at the start, I suppose." With slight hesitation, Diana popped off the top of the bottle and downed its contents. It only took a few seconds for Diana to spit it up onto the floor.
"Must be a far cry from caviar and white truffles."
"That was disgusting! What sort of potion could have that kind of foul flavor?!"
"Toilet water."
"Toilet-why?!" Diana shouted, spitting up even more of it.
"Sometimes I want to mess with Akko, but I just don't have the time to come up with a new potion. That makes sense, right?"
"No!"
2.
"Okay, this isn't so bad," Diana said as she looked at herself in the mirror.
"Easy for you to say," Sucy said with a frown. "How do you think I feel finding out that something I literally poured my blood, sweat, and tears into just dyes someone's hair yellow."
"I think it's a good look for me. Not something I'd want to wear all the time, but-what did you say you put in here?"
3.
"Now this is more like it," Sucy said, smirking at the results of her potion.
"A tentacle! There's a tentacle coming out of my forehead!" Diana shouted. "Why would you need to make something like this?!"
"Why not?" Diana whipped her head around at Sucy, barely missing hitting her in the face with her new tentacle.
4.
"I don't know, Diana, I think being bald really shows off the tentacle."
"I don't want to show it off, though!"
5.
"Wait, what happened now?" Diana asked after everything in the room became bigger.
"It looks like you turned yourself into a pickle, Diana," Sucy said.
"A… a pickle? Why? Am I immortal? Can I… Can I even do anything?"
"You wouldn't be much of a pickle if you could, Diana. Not like you're Solenya, or anything. Get over yourself."
6.
"I can't believe all those other changes are still in effect," Diana said, looking over her body with disappointment.
"On the plus side, I guess I invented an anti-pickle serum," Sucy said. "There's probably some weirdoes who'll get a kick outta that."
"As long as you can profit, I suppose."
"Obviously. Also, as enjoyable a sight as it might be, please put your clothes back on."
"S-Sorry."
7.
"So, Diana, just out of curiosity, can you fly with wings made entirely out of potato chips?"
"I don't know, and I really don't want to find out."
8.
"A swastika made of chest hair? Are you serious?" Diana asked with completely warranted spite.
"Yeah, I know I didn't set out to do that, but I agree that that's in pretty bad taste," Sucy said. "Just for that, you don't have to drink two potions, 'kay?"
"Well, I guess having a swastika ended up being a good thing," Diana said, her face falling soon afterwards.
"Thank God for context, right?"
9.
"SEqwAZAFW3WSE awD!"
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
"Qa1! Ahgfvhgrrdf64EU4EWSR67UTGVnhgwsdg!"
"HAHAHAHAHA! Try talking when it's not just gibberish! HAHAHAHAHAHA!"
10.
"Well, thanks to some unintentional Nazi branding, looks like we're down to the last one," Sucy said.
"wehdxRFJFCXry6rdc," Diana said, still in utter gibberish.
"Hope you know that, in all likelihood, this one will be the worst of them all. Not too late to take the panacea and give up," Sucy said with a toothy grin as she handed Diana a bottle of blue liquid.
"7I6TAHURFCFH4R5DCF." Sucy took that as a refusal. Thus, with slight hesitation, Diana downed the potion in one sitting. For a few seconds, nothing happened. But then all of a sudden, a comical "POP" sounded through the air and Diana fell to the floor.
"Oh my, I lost my balance there," Diana said. "Wait, did I say that? I said something? What about…" Diana rushed over to the mirror to look over her body. It was just as she thought: everything the potions did had vanished. Her hair was both back and restored to its original color, there was no tentacle on her forehead, no potato chip wings, no hairy swastika, no speaking in gibberish. She looked completely cured.
"Well this is a crappy ending," Sucy said with a frown.
"Sorry that I didn't meet your expectations, but that was never part of our arrangement."
"What arrangement?" A new voice asked. Diana and Sucy both turned their heads to see Akko standing in the doorway.
"Nothing, Akko. Sucy and I just had a little bet that I won, and both of our lives are going to be much easier for a while." Sucy stuck her tongue out at this.
"I don't really get it, but thanks!" Akko walked into the room and brought Diana in for a hug that was immediately reciprocated.
This made it all worth it, Diana told herself. Making sure Akko's safe and happy will always put a smile on my face. As long as we're together, there's nothing I won't do to-
"Ah!" Akko suddenly shouted, pulling away from Diana. "What the hell? Something just poked me!"
"What do you…" Diana felt something odd below her waist. Something that probably, most definitely shouldn't be there. Feeling more nervous than any of the potions had made her, Diana looked down towards the ground.
Her skirt was being slightly lifted up. Sucy couldn't stop laughing.
In the end, Akko remained as Sucy's guinea pig. However, Diana broke both of her hands for three weeks, so it all evened out, in the end.
