It's been several days now since I realized I had a crush on Willow and, so far, I've made no move to change that. Why? Well that's because I've been helping Amity with her own crush, trying to figure out how she can ask Luz to Grom without being an utter mess.
And so that's how I found myself tonight, sitting on Amity's bed while she was pacing around (what a surprise), ranting about possible ideas that each sounded more desperate than the last.
"Amity, Amity, Amity." I said while standing up and putting both hands on her shoulders to stop her. "One, you're driving me insane with this much pacing around. Two, why don't you keep it simple?"
"Simple? What do you mean simple? Luz is too good for simple!" She said, throwing her arms up in exasperation and, if I hadn't my hands on her shoulders, I'm sure she would start to pace around. "I can't do simple!"
"Well Luz might be too good for simple, but you're clearly not ready for something more complex."
"What do you mean I'm not ready? I'm a Blight! Of course I'm ready… I think."
"And there's the doubt." I said while guiding her to her bed and sitting on the edge. "Look I think that it would be better for your weak, gay heart if you did something simple, like a note or something like that."
"Well if you've got so many great ideas, why haven't you used them on Willow?"
"That's because, right now, and I'm surprised as well, this isn't about me." I say while poking Amity on the forehead which earned me a pout from the green-haired witch. "This is about you and your inability to stand in the same space as Luz without being an absolute mess."
At this, Amity groans and hides her head between her hands. "Ugh don't remind me… how do you manage to stay so calm and composed in front of Willow?" She leans back up and glares at me. "Because I know you have it as bad as me but, somehow, you manage to be a functioning person around her."
"Ah, you're talking about my incredible acting skills, confidence, and general ability to bullshit my way through things." When Mitten's glare only deepens I chuckle. "I'm also constantly repeating inside my head "don't freak out" like crazy."
Amity groans and lies down on her bed. "I'm not going to be able to invite her to Grom, am I?"
"What?! Of course you will! You've got my help-"
"You still haven't asked Willow."
"Not the point! Now, get your sorry, brooding ass off that bed and write that note."
"Fine! Fine, I'll write the stupid note!" She says while sitting up and walking to her desk. Once there she sat, grabbed a sheet of paper and a pen, and began to write.
"Um, Mittens? What are you doing?" I ask her while standing beside her and taking a look at the boring piece of paper she has on her desk.
"Uh… writing the note you told me to write?"
"In that piece of boring, white paper? Come on, girl! You can do better than that!" And with a quick twirl of my finger, I changed the color of the paper from white to purple. "There, much better."
Amity simply rolled her eyes and muttered a simple "whatever" before she finished the note. Then I read it and nodded in approval. It was simple, concise and straight (heh) to the point and, most importantly, it was signed by Amity.
Once we got sure that Amity had all she needed to ask Luz tomorrow to go to Grom with her, and another small pep talk so that she wouldn't chicken out, I said goodbye to my best friend and left Blight Manor.
The next day began with the lovely chirping of birds, not a cloud in the sky, and the weather was nice and warm. Needless to say, I was terrified. Nothing good ever comes out when a day this important starts this good. Call me superstitious, but I talk from experience.
So, with a bad omen lurking over my head, I got ready for school and left my home earlier than usual. Why am I leaving early? Well, I can assure you that it's not so that I can stare at Willow while she does her morning workout, that would be creepy.
Once I walked into the halls of Hexide I knew that my guts had been right and that today would be a really long and hard day. There were Grom decorations everywhere and couples doing many ridiculous Gromposals. I even managed to spot the moment when Skara was asked by, what I assume is her current boyfriend, to Grom (they won't last. I love Skara, but she changes partners more quickly than I can keep count.)
It wasn't long before I got joined by Luz, Willow and Gus. The human was looking around dumbfounded and confused. "What's the occasion? Some kind of school dance?"
"You guys have something like that in the human realm?" Gus asked with starts in his eyes. "You have to tell me all about it!"
"Heh, relax little guy." She says while ruffling his hair, which prompted Gus to swat her hand away with a pout. "But yeah, we have something similar. It's called Prom and it's this huge deal with a dance, dressed and all that crap."
I raised an eyebrow and began to walk, the rest of the group walking alongside me (and I tried not to think about how close Willow was to me) when Luz crashed against someone.
"Watch where you're going nit-LUZ!" And obviously, it turned out to be Mittens. It wasn't even a second later when she was standing up, face dusted with a slight blush and her things back safely in her hands. Everything except a purple piece of paper that was now on Luz's hands.
"What's-woah!" And Amity quickly snatched the paper from her hands. "What quick grabbers you have there, Mittens." Ahahahahahahaha! Oh man… I like this girl. And Amity's reaction was priceless.
She was about to say something else when the sounds of Principal Bump's voice cut out through the school by some kind of magic. "Good morning, dear students. As you all know Grom is almost upon us and, as its custom, I'll be naming this year's Grom King or Queen. Best of luck to all of you." Ah… this is what I feared. Today is the day that some poor soul will be named Grom Royalty and will have to face Grometheus. "Well without further ado, and the best luck to you, I will now reveal the name of our Grom Royalty: Miss Amity Blight!" At that everyone turned to look at the youngest of the Blights, whose face drained of all color and it was filled with dread.
Without saying a word Amity turned around and ran away, leaving a very shocked Luz behind.
"Well fuck, I didn't see that one coming." I said while looking in the direction that Amity took. "Can you guys explain to Luz what this means? Cuz she's clearly confused" I asked Willow and Gus who simply nodded and dragged Luz away.
"Now… time to do my best friend duties." And I took off, running through the halls to try and find Amity.
Turns out that, when she doesn't want to be found, Amity is pretty hard to find. I tried every single place I thought she could be and came out with my hands empty. I even asked the twins for help and not even they could find her.
So, after hours and hours of searching around, the three of us concluded that she didn't want to be found and each of us returned to our respective homes.
As usual, dinner was just Byron and me since my parents were out on an important business meeting. After that I took a shower and, while I was getting dressed, someone opened the door to my room.
"Val, I need your help" Surprise, surprise it was Amity.
"Amity!" I rushed at my best friend and hugged her. (Don't worry, I was fully dressed.) "Titan we were so worried! We couldn't find you anywhere and you weren't answering your scroll and… did you say you needed my help?"
I felt her nod and then took a few steps back. "Luz is going to take my place as my champion and fight Grom by herself."
I blinked hard and was stunned by a second. "She'll do what? Take your place? Does she even know who she'll be facing?"
"Yes, she knows. And that's why I need your help."
"Girl, you know you'll always have my help with anything you need." I told her with a smile, which she copied.
"Thank you, Val." She gave me another hug and then sat on my bed. "We're going to go tomorrow to the Owl House and help her train so that she's as ready as she can be to face her biggest fears."
"And you want me to go to make her fears real with my illusions, right?"
She shook her head and smiled. "Believe it or not, the twins offered their help so they'll be handling that. I want you to use your light weapons and teach her how to fight."
An evil grin covered my face and a laughed a bit. "Oh, this is going to be so much fun! I'm so in!"
"Just, please, go easy on her." She tried to use her secret weapon on me, but I was too even excited to even fall for that.
"Oh no. Grom won't go easy on Luz, so neither will I!"
"Oh boy… what have I done?"
And with that, after talking for a few hours, Amity and I decided that she would sleep here tonight. We could round up the other two idiots before going to the Owl house.
Thankfully the next day was a day free of school since they were setting everything up for the dance. So, after eating breakfast and fetching the twins, the four of us made our way to the Owl House.
Once there we got greeted by the disturbing Owl Tube and, this time, I didn't stop Amity when she hissed at the thing and sent it back to its place by the door. Once there Amity told us to wait while she went to get Luz.
"So," Emira asked me while standing on my left while Edric stood by my right, "a little bird told us that you now have a crush on "strong and buff Willow." And then she proceeded to make a dramatic sigh, like a dumb, love-struck idiot.
"And that you still haven't asked her out to Grom." Edric added with a smirk. Gosh, I hate when they do this.
"Well, she's right. I haven't asked her and I don't think I will. Besides, don't you two still have to ask your respective crushes to the dance?" When the two of them blushed like a pair of identical tomatoes, I decided to push my advantage and turned to point at Edric. "You still haven't asked Jerbo out, even though you've been crushing on him for more than a year now." His only response was to get even redder (which I didn't think was possible.) Then I turned to Emira with a smirk on my face and she gulped. "And you still haven't asked Viney out so you don't have the moral ground to make fun of me."
After using their own arguments against them, the twins decided to drop the subject and simply stood there, taking calming breaths so that Amity wouldn't catch them with blushing faces.
Speaking of Mittens, she walked out of the door after Hooty slithered back to his hole while muttering something about a "scary girl." She was suspiciously covered in brown feathers and Luz was trailing behind her, laughing out loud and plucking some of the feathers from Amity's mane of hair.
"Hey guys." She greeted us after calming down and whipping some tears from her eyes. "So, Amity dragged y'all here to help me train to face Grometheus, right?"
"Yeap! Well not me, I'm here to counteract the Blight Stupidity."
"Hey!" The Blight siblings all answered in unison while Luz chuckled and looked at me with a raised eyebrow.
"Blight Stupidity? What's that?"
"Well as you know all three of the Blight siblings are brilliant and incredibly smart." I said while gesturing at the green-haired trio. "But when they are together they tend to have just one brain cell, and it's usually on Mittens."
"Hey!" The twins exclaimed while Amity simply stuck her tongue at them.
"I see what you mean, they are definitely a trio of dorks." Thank the Titan that they were too busy bickering between each other to hear that, otherwise I'm sure that they would have banded against a common enemy and that's not pretty.
"That they are. But all jokes aside, I'm also here to help you train."
Luz nodded and pointed at the twins with her thumb. "You gonna make some illusions with Dork one and Dork two?"
"Noup!" I said while twirling my finger and making a sword out of light. "I'm going to make sure that you've got what it takes to be a good fighter, Noceda."
She smirked and cracked her knuckles. "Bring it on, Aerin." She was about to lunge at me when she stopped. "Oh! Let me just go and fetch something real quick." And, without waiting for an answer, she ran back to the Owl House.
"Well, this will certainly be interesting." I said once Luz came back out with some sort of metal pole in her hands and stood ready. "Alright, show me what you've got, human." And" we both lunged at each other, weapons ready to strike.
Hello, hello! So chapter six is out and this marks the start of the Grom arc. I decided to split this whole thing into three separate parts: the reveal, Grom and the aftermath.
Sadly you guys will have to wait a week, maybe a bit more, for the next chapter because I'm waiting for a commission to be ready. Once I have that in my hands, I'll publish chapter seven, until then... waiting it is!