Whew.. Long break. Sorry 'bout that!
Anyways, continue voting. It may take a few more chapters until it's over. ^-^; I'm making up storylines for both sides as I go along here.

Voting is, as far as I know, tied.

Anywho, here we go.

Chapter Four

Kim lay in her bed, the blankets pulled up until they were covering everything except her face and one arm that hung over the side of her bed. Her eyes had lost their dreamy happiness. Josh Manke was pushed to the back of her mind, and instead a choice was filtering in and out of her thoughts. Should she turn Amethyst, who was quickly becoming one of her best friends, in, or should she pretend that she had no clue about her true identity? She gripped the edge of her bed tensely and sighed. 'What a way to end a good day,' she thought, staring at the ceiling with half open eyes. 'Maybe I should just tell her that I know,' she mused. 'We could work something out.'

The dream she'd had the night before she'd found Amethyst shimmered back into her mind and she shuddered. There had been a cat-woman in that dream, and she hadn't been a good one. What if that was Amy's true form? Kim shook her head and tried to snuggle closer to her pillow. 'It couldn't be,' she murmured. That thing was a lot older than she is, and it didn't even really look like her.

Kim decided that she would approach Amy the next day and, with that new resolution in mind, fell into a dreamless sleep.

~*~*~*~

Amethyst prowled around her home restlessly. Sunday seemed like a very boring day. Ron and his family had disappeared to a place called 'church', and Kim's mother had informed her that Kim was sleeping in. She growled unhappily and leapt from her perch on the couch and to the floor. She could watch T.V., but it seemed that Sunday was filled with shows that were of no interest to her. She had tried getting on the internet, but nothing on there interested her either unless she was talking to someone. She pouted and pushed a lock of her yellow hair out of her eyes.

A ring sounded through the air, sounding so sweet to the bored Amethyst. She grinned happily and vaulted over to the phone grabbing it off of the hook and saying in her sweetest, happiest voice, "Hello?"

"Hi."

Amethyst's grin widened. It was Kim! "Hi, Kim!" she said cheerfully.

"Somebody sounds happy," Kim's voice said.

Amethyst laughed. "Yeah, a little bit," she replied. "So, whatcha doin' today?"

"Not much," Kim's voice replied. Amethyst noted that she sounded a little bit distracted. "I was wondering if I could maybe come over," she said.

"Sure!" Amethyst said in her newly acquired sunny tone. "Is Ron coming?" she asked.

Kim replied, "Probably. Church is over by now, so he'll be home soon. I'll call him as soon as I'm done with you."

"Cool!" Amethyst said. She had listened to people saying 'cool' and had come to like the term. It was a slightly new one to her, as no one in the laboratory ever said 'cool' to anyone in such a way. She had added it to her small mental dictionary of terms that included such slang as 'sucks' and 'crap' and a list of curses that were new to her. "When'll you be over?" she asked.

There was a small pause, and then Kim's reply came. "Probably as soon as Ron's ready if he's allowed to come. It won't be any later than twelve-thirty."

Amethyst glanced at the clock, which now read eleven-thirty-six. "'Kay," she said. "I'll be waiting!"

"Alright," Kim said. Amethyst bit her lip and winced as her fang protruded into the flesh. There was that distracted tone again. "Seeya in a bit."

"Bye," Amethyst said. The phone clicked, and Amethyst was left alone again, but at least she had a new thought to chew on. Why was Kim sounding so distracted? Had something happened?

Amethyst scurried to her room and changed out of her pajamas and into some normal, comfortable clothing. She made herself change back into her human form and then stalked back into her small living room to await her guests.

~*~*~*~

Rebecca watched as Ron finished his conversation with Kim. She had concluded that they were going to Amy's house. Rebecca sighed. She still didn't feel right about that girl.

"I'm going to Amy's house!" Ron called to his mother, who was in her room getting out of her church clothes. Ron had already done so, and was in his normal casual clothing.

"Alright!" his mother called. "Be home by six!"

"'Kay," Ron replied. He waved at Rebecca and grinned, receiving the same response from his baby sister, even if it was a bit reluctant.

Rebecca laid her head back against the cushiony side of the couch as the door slammed and Ron disappeared. The awkward feeling that she was having about her brother's new friend had begun to grow. 'I hope it's just me,' she thought, grabbing the channel changer and flipping the television on.

~*~*~

Amethyst pulled aside the curtains covering her living room window and peered out, the humming sound of a car having reached her ears moments before. She grinned as she saw that it was indeed Kim's mom's car. She giddily vaulted over to the chair that sat right next to the door and waited for a knock. When it came, she opened it without hesitation and said, "Hiya!"

Ron grinned and waved, and Rufus mimicked his owner, but Kim just flashed a small, wary smile and followed her blonde-haired best friend into 'Amy's' living room. Amethyst remembered Kim's distant voice on the phone and frowned. There was something wrong with her. Amethyst sighed softly and pushed the door shut. How someone who had just been asked out by their 'dream guy' could go from the happiest mood they were able to manage to one that could only be called melancholy was beyond her.

Ron plopped himself down on Amethyst's soft, creamy white couch and opened his mouth to start jabbering on but was silenced by a look from his red-haired friend, who sat down beside him and looked at Amethyst with very solemn eyes. "Amy," she began. "We've gotta talk."

'Amy' blinked her amber eyes and said curiously, "About what?"

"I know who you are," Kim said. Amy felt her throat clench up and her heart stop beating. 'How could she know?' she thought. She grinned weakly and laughed.

"Of course you do, Kim," she said. She chuckled and winked. "I know who you are too." She kept the grin on her face and hoped that her friend couldn't see her nervousness.

Kim sighed. "You know I didn't mean it like that, Amethyst," she said. Amethyst's grin dissipated.

"Amethyst?" she asked, aware that her nails had begun to elongate and sharpen and that her hearing was beginning to increase. She couldn't control her transformation because she was stressing out. She gripped her nails into the fabrics of her jeans as she sat down hard on one of her chairs and felt them dig into her skin a bit. 'This can't be happening to me!' she screeched at herself in her thoughts. 'No one can know!'

"You can't know!" she screamed, her voice shrill and desperate. Kim moved to calm her down.

"We don't want to turn you in," Kim said, gripping her shoulders. "We just had to know if it's true."

Ron grinned and gave a thumbs up sign from his seat on the couch. Rufus smiled from his perch in Ron's pocket and said, "Yup!"

Amethyst narrowed her golden eyes and stared into Kim's green ones, searching them for any signs that she might be lying. "You really aren't going to turn me in?" she asked warily.

"Of course not," Ron said, "we're buds." Rufus acknowledged his comment with a vigorous nod.

Amethyst stuck one of her claws in her mouth and chewed on it pensively. "How do I know that you're not lying?" she murmured, eyeing the trio suspiciously.

"You could just trust us," Ron offered.

Amethyst continued chewing on one her claw. Every once in awhile she'd shoot a glance at Ron or Kim and search their expressions. After a while she sighed and leaned back against her chair. "Alright, you guys win," she said smiling and shrugging. "No one else knows, right?"

"No one," Kim said, smiling with relief.

"Not even Wade?" Amethyst asked.

"Not even Wade," Kim assured her.

Amethyst smiled wider and sat up. "Alright, then." She slowly made her form become human again.

Kim stood up. "Well, what do we do now?" she asked, looking to her host.

Amethyst stood and beckoned for Ron to do the same. "I want to show you guys something," she said in her most trustworthy voice. "I mean, if we're going to stay friends than we can't have any secrets from each other, right?"

She walked out of her living room, trailed by the curious trio, and into the kitchen, and then into the next room. It was a cozy little room, closed off from anyone trying to look in, and much larger than it seemed it should be for what looked like a generally small house on the outside. A fireplace glimmered with embers in the corner as they entered and Amethyst smiled. "This room is a result of my early training in the magics," she murmured. Her eyes seemed to glitter as she looked back at Kim. "I know you don't believe in stuff like that, but I wanted to make sure you understand how I do the stuff that I do."

Kim blinked and looked around herself. Amethyst was trying to tell her that she'd created this room. She smiled. 'Might as well humor her,' she thought to herself. "Wow," she said in a voice she often only used for her odd cousin Larry and at times Ron, "this is really impressive.."

Ron, on the other hand, was totally overwhelmed. "Impressive?" he demanded. "This is beyond impressive, this is cool!" He grinned and walked into the room a bit further. "I mean, making yourself a room? Can you do that for me?" He trailed over to the large reading desk in the middle of the room. "Is this the spell book?" he asked curiously, picking it up and beginning to flip through the pages. "How can you read it?" He was completely baffled by the strange words that graced the pages of the thick, leather-bound book. Rufus crawled out of his pocket and up his shirt to get a better look.

"Hmm.." Rufus muttered thoughtfully, trying to make out the odd letters and shapes. Ron fingered passed a page with a quite horrific image of a human mutating into a skeleton and the little naked mole rat yelped. "Scary!" he whimpered, disappearing under Ron's shirt.

Amethyst seemed happy with Ron's excitement. "D'you want to see some of my magic first-hand?" she asked.

"Uhm, I'm sure that's not necessary," Kim said quickly, interrupting the reply Ron had been about to give, walking over to him, and yanking the spell book out of his hands. She closed it and set it back down on the desk. "Why don't we just go do something somewhere else?" she asked.

"Aww.." Ron pouted.

Amethyst frowned. "But there's a spell that I have to show you guys. I've been working on it for a long time, and I've just got it right." She snatched the book off of the desk with surprising agility and held it close to herself. "Just let me show you just this one," she said, smiling as innocently as she could manage.

"Well.." Kim began in an unsure tone. 'It couldn't hurt, could it? She really believes she can do it..' she mused to herself. "Alright, but just this one."

Amethyst smiled. The smile didn't quite extend to her eyes, and Kim was suddenly unsure over whether she'd done the right thing or not. She opened the book and closed her eyes, flipping through the pages and coming to a stop on a certain one about a quarter through the book. "This one," she said softly.

Ron was excited. "So what're you gonna do?" he asked. Rufus blinked up at Amethyst with his large black eyes.

"It's a surprise," Amethyst said. She placed the book back down and stood back. "But you guys gotta promise me one thing," she said.

"What's that?" Kim asked.

"You can't get mad at me. I've gotta do this.." Amethyst said, her eyes becoming distant.

"What d'you mean by that?" Kim asked suspiciously.

Amethyst ignored her and began muttering something in a very low, growling voice. Her eyes had changed into her true form's again, and Kim was suddenly hit with the memory of her nightmare again. "Stop!" she shouted. A very bad feeling was welling up inside of her. "What're you doing?"

Amethyst frowned. "I'm only protecting myself," she said. "No one can ever know. I'll never go back there!"

Kim gasped. A sudden weightlessness had overcome her. She was feeling very awkward. The room began swaying and slowly began to fade away, but she didn't lose consciousness. A burning pain had started inside of her. She tried to yell out, but she couldn't. She couldn't feel anything. 'What's happening?' she screamed to herself. She couldn't see or hear anything. She didn't know that Ron was experiencing the exact same thing, and was now having second thoughts about the cool-ness of magic.

Kim suddenly felt as if she'd been thrown at something. She fell down to the ground hard and all of her senses came back, but she experienced them for only a moment before she fainted from shock.

Amethyst surveyed her handiwork and sighed. She reached down and pressed her hand against Ron's heart. Rufus had hidden himself back in Ron's pocket and she could see him trembling within. She could feel the slightly faster, steady beating beneath her hand. "Don't you worry, little rodent," she purred. "Neither of them are in any danger." She heard the rodent squeak in protest and he stuck his little pink head out of his pocket and looked up at her angrily. She smirked. "I wouldn't do anything to hurt my best friends," she said.

~*~*~*~

Back in Ron's home, Rebecca clenched her fists and her teeth. She could feel something happening to her big brother, but she couldn't identify what. 'I should've told him about that girl!' she berated herself. 'If he gets hurt it'll be all my fault!' Amethyst's picture flashed in her mind and mutated into a creature she couldn't identify. Her eyes widened. The room she'd been in began to fade away. She saw Ron, Kim, and that Amy. She called out to them, but none of them could hear her. She watched as her big brother and his best friend collapsed, and then the image broke. She was left in her family's television room, staring at the program she'd been watching beforehand. She started to cry. 'Please let them be okay!' she begged in her thoughts.

~*~*~*~

The 'big' thing has finally happened.

All will become clearer in the next chapter. ^_~

I'll have the next chapter up as soon as possible, but right now I've gotta sleep.

Night night!

~IceWolf645~