AN~ Evil ScrapbookerJW13: Thank you! It won't be ending any time soon, though. And she didn't shower, thank goodness. I think they did a good job, but they just took a very different angle than me. ...A more popular angle...
Scarlet Wolf: Moth shall leave eventually, I promise. But not for long.
Erika J: Thanks! :)
Purpleflower23: I have no idea how long it will be, but I do have most of it planned out. In fact, if I die, there are some very messy notes in one of the documents on my account, and people have my permission to hack my account and finish the story. But I don't plan on dying, so it's a moot point. More Puckabrina is coming, I promise you.
Curlscat: You stole my name, actually. :) I've had this username since... 2005? Yeah, I think that's about right. It's my username everywhere, not just here. (Besides, if you want to get snippy, since I have the account and you don't... Well. :))
Kat: Again with the people who have my name... -.- More chapters coming up!
Moonflower: Your reviews are slightly confusing. But, no, as of chapter thirteen, Sabrina and Puck do not know Bella is good. They still think she's evil.
RRB: Paragraph 1: I agree! Because we don't want another Cindy-Tom crisis, like in book six! Paragraph 2: That's a good idea. I concur. Paragraph 3: Point taken. However, I didn't entirely want this to be a story about their powers, and I have a feeling their parents would have put some restriction on the use of powers to prevent absolute chaos (plus, it takes them a lot of energy to do anything, since they're such new everafters) But I'll try to make them do more. Paragraph 4: I'm not out of school yet. :P I won't be for ages, plus I work and have camps. So, the updates will probably stay about the same. -.-
The day did not go well. Any teacher or friend she had who wasn't in the Scarlet Hand took a great deal of convincing before they believed the story about switching bodies, and most of them still refused to trust her with anything. Snow suggested that the two girls simply switch schedules for the next two days, so that it at least looked as if they were in the right classes, but neither agreed.
"This is horrible." Sabrina groaned at lunch. "She's walking around wearing makeup and a dress of mine, and people still don't believe me when I say she stole my body. This is completely destroying my reputation."
"Poor baby." Art said, not sounding sympathetic in the least. In fact, he didn't even look up from the house of cards he and Daphne were building.
Red said quietly, "I overheard her saying that 'if she had to be stuck in this pathetic human body, she might as well make it look as good as possible'."
Sabrina groaned, dropping her head onto the table.
"On the plus side, you look like a girl today." Puck noted.
"How is that a good thing?" Sabrina asked.
"How is it not a good thing?" Jonas asked. "You'd really be very good-looking if you tried. Maybe if you ever wore anything other than jeans and t-shirts..."
"I wear sweatpants sometimes." Sabrina said defensively.
"Which is even worse." Mustardsees said after swallowing a bite of something that might have been canned peas. "Sweatpants have no shape. I think Jonas was talking about things like skirts. Or, like, tight jeans."
"They're so uncomfortable, though!" Sabrina complained.
"Try finding some that fit." Bella suggested. "I have an idea. Go over to Moth's house this afternoon and find some of her jeans!"
Sabrina made a face. "That's so weird. Changing in her body... ew."
"I Concur." Red spoke up, watching Daphne and Art pile more cards onto the house. "I wouldn't even be comfortable if Daphne and I were switched, let alone switching with an enemy."
"Thank you, Red." Sabrina said. "At least someone understands me."
"I've given up on understanding girls." Puck said, stealing a piece of chicken from Art's plate. "I don't think there's anything to understand."
"I'm not going to dignify that with a response." Sabrina said loftily.
Daphne looked up from the house of cards, horrified. "You sounded just like Moth there for a second."
Sabrina looked at Daphne, offended. "I did not!"
"Whatever you say." Daphne went back to her cards.
Renee walked over to their table before Sabrina could think of an appropriate response.
"What is Moth doing at our lunch table?" Renee asked the general public. "And why is Sabrina over with Tobey and Natalie?"
Sabrina sighed, putting her head in her hands. "Can someone else explain this to her? I've done it, like, fifteen times today already, and I don't want to start again."
"Moth stole her body." Mustardseed explained, scooting over so that Renee could sit next to him. "So Sabrina stole Moth's back. She's pretty ticked about it.
"Who?" Renee asked.
"Both." Daphne said, placing the final card on the stack. "It's done! We did it!"
"High five." Art raised his hand, grinning, and Daphne slapped it with her own.
"I hit your hand!" Daphne gaped. "On the first go! I don't think that's ever happened before."
"It hasn't." Art grinned.
"Anyway." Renee said pointedly, "Why did Moth do that?"
"It's obvious, isn't it?" Puck grinned. "Women just can't get enough of me."
Sabrina slapped his arm lightly. "That's enough, airhead." She turned to Renee. "She decided that Puck was in love with me, and the only way to get to him was to pretend to be me and then seduce him. It didn't work."
Jonas snickered. "The image of Sabrina seducing Puck is really, really funny."
"Not from my end, it's not." Sabrina muttered, stabbing her lunch with a spork. Then, realizing that she's just attempted to stab canned peas, she sighed, and rested her head in her hands. "I want my body back."
"Believe me, we all want you back in your body, too." Wendell spoke up emphatically, for the first time that period. "Seeing Moth act like Sabrina is weird."
Bella nodded. "You don't even walk the same."
"What?" Sabrina blinked.
"You walk like a guy, and Moth walks like a diva." Bella explained. "But now your body is walking like a diva, and Moth's is walking like a guy. And all these little mannerisms... you don't notice them until something like this happens. I kind of think we'd have noticed something was up even if you hadn't told us all before Moth could really pull anything off."
"Well, that's good, at least." Sabrina said, then paused. "Wait- I really walk like a guy?"
The whole table nodded, and Sabrina smiled a little. "Well, at least it's probably as humiliating for Moth as it is for me."
"Probably." Renee agreed, snickering. "So, are you, like, stuck this way forever?"
"Oh, heck no!" Sabrina looked horrified. "I think I'd cry!"
"Don't blame you." Daphne muttered. "This is creepy." She went back to eating, but her tray jostled the house of cards, which cascaded down, pieces of it falling all over the floor and landing in several people's lunch trays. "Drat." She muttered, pulling a card out of her mashed potatoes with a grimace.
"Here, I'll help." Art said, bending down to pick up cards on the floor.
"Me, too." Sabrina joined Art on the floor, while the others gathered the cards from the table.
Renee stared. "Now I'm really convinced. And slightly weirded out. Moth would never do work without something in it for her."
"Yup." Sabrina agreed, dumping a handful of cards on the table. "Which is why Moth just made Toby go buy her cookies."
"Really?" Bella looked over with interest. "And Natalie didn't stop her?"
"He's probably getting some for her, too." Art grinned. "That boy is whipped."
"Scuzi," Daphne said, standing. "I want more food."
"So are you." Renee muttered.
"Am not!" Art protested.
"Are so." Wendell responded. "It's not so bad, though, being whipped. Just accept it and move on."
"But I don't even have a girlfriend!" Art protested, then turned to his plate. "Hey!" He complained. "Where'd my food go?"
Puck snickered, and Art shoved him, saying, "You're paying for a new lunch for me." He stood, carrying his tray and walked off, muttering, "I am not whipped."
Later, during the advanced gym class, when everyone had arrived in the gym, the Beast said, "Don't bother changing out, buckos. We're starting a new unit today. Come on upstairs."
Upstairs meant the attic. They'd only been up there a few times, when they'd been doing units on outdoor games, because there was no space for a baseball field or anything like that in the downtown section of Ferryport Landing. They would have gone up more often, but the Beast had caught Puck trying to break into the teacher's rooms on the way up, and decided that it was too risky to take them up very often.
The attic had been enchanted to resemble a grassy field, complete with a sky. The only thing that kept this image from being complete was the presence of window-frames, and the abrupt drop-off where the attic ended and the real sky began.
Sabrina entered the attic this time around expecting to see the same field she'd seen the last time she'd been there, and as a result, she was dumbfounded when she saw, not a flat grassy plain, but a small forest.
"Um, didn't this use to be a field?" Puck asked, staring.
"It changes, based on what we need." The Beast explained shortly. "You ten are past the point where practicing any more in an empty room would be helpful. So we're starting you on practical applications."
"Meaning fight simulations?" Natalie asked.
"Exactly." The Beast nodded. "We'll start with something simple, since you've never fought in a situation like this before- that I know of. Pick teams of five, elect a leader- and not one that's been the leader in the past week- and we'll go from there. Capische?"
The students nodded, and began forming groups. Puck, Sabrina, Mustardseed, Moth, and another fairy that Sabrina didn't know ended up in a group together, partly because most people were very confused about which girl was which.
"I know the rest of these people, but I don't think I've ever been in a group with you." Sabrina said, looking at the boy as they all huddled up to choose a leader.
"We were on the same team last week." The boy said, raising an eyebrow.
"Actually, that was her." Sabrina said, pointing her thumb at Moth. "She stole my body, and now I'm stuck in hers until tomorrow afternoon. I'm actually Sabrina, and she's Moth. Who are you?"
"I'm Ariel." The boy fairy said. "Fourth member of the royal honor guard of Faerie."
"Nice to meet you." Sabrina said. "You want to be leader?"
He shook his head. "Didn't get much sleep last night. I'm not at the top of my game."
"I was leader last week." Puck said. "And so was Mustardseed."
"So was I." Sabrina made a face. "Did we really do three fights last week?" The regular schedule was two fights per week and three days of lessons on how to improve one thing or another.
"Yup." Mustardseed said. "Remember? That one day he had to leave, so he gave us busy work."
Sabrina sighed. "That leaves... crap."
"That's not my name." Moth said pointedly.
"I'm aware." Sabrina snapped. "I was voicing my opinion on the fact that you're our leader."
"Well, that's not nice." Moth sniffed, standing. "I'd think you'd be a bit nicer to your commanding officer."
Sabrina waited until Moth had left to tell the Beast that they had finished picking a leader to roll her eyes and make a face at Moth's back.
"Maybe it won't be so bad." Puck said bracingly. "We'll be in the woods, so you could maybe wander off and say you got lost."
"He won't buy it, and it'll bring my grade down." Sabrina said mournfully. "I'll just deal with it, I guess."
Mustardseed applauded her attitude sarcastically, saying, "Bravo, Sabrina. You're becoming mature!"
Sabrina stuck her tongue out at him.
"You were saying?" Puck asked Mustardseed.
"All right, since both teams have their leaders, we can move on to the next step!" The Beast called. "Everyone listening?"
Everyone shut up and listened.
"Good." The Beast continued. "Now, Moth's team is going to head out into the woods until they can't see any of us, and they'll prepare for Natalie's group, which will attack at their discretion, after I give the signal."
"All right, are we going?" Sabrina asked, after several seconds of silence, in which nobody on Moth's team really moved.
"Of course we are." Moth snapped. "Let's go. And remember, I'm in charge today. Not you."
"I never said I was." Sabrina rolled her eyes. "I was nicely waiting for you to make a decision, and when you didn't, I prompted you to move forward."
The group headed into the forest, trying to be as quiet as possible. Puck, Mustardseed, and Ariel flew, and Sabrina and Moth both watched wistfully, but they realized that they didn't know how to work the wings they were controlling well enough to be quiet about it.
Once they were far enough out, in Moth's opinion, they stopped, and everyone looked at Moth expectantly.
"So what are we doing?" Ariel asked eventually.
"We're waiting." Moth said. "And planning."
"What are we planning?" Mustardseed asked.
"How to best go about this." Moth said again.
"They're all huge." Sabrina said, mostly to herself. "It's Natalie, those two Russian princes, Art, and Moth's brother, whose name I'm blanking on. They're all, like, twice my size."
"Leverage, then." Puck said. "We have to be prepared, 'cause if they jump on us, we'll be squished."
"We can hide in the trees." Mustardseed suggested.
Ariel nodded. "And jump down on them when they show up. We'll be able to see, then, too."
"Excuse me, but I'm in charge here, not you four!" Moth snapped.
"We know." Mustardseed said calmly. "We're merely offering suggestions."
"Oh." Moth said. "Well, then, I accept all your suggestions. Everyone get in the trees and wait for them to show up."
Sabrina rolled her- Moth's- eyes, but picked a tree and attempted to climb it quietly. It was harder in Moth's body, which was much more sensitive and less calloused than hers, not to mention slightly shorter. The rest did the same, each in a different tree.
Then they waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Just as Sabrina was starting to lose her patience and fidget, they came.
She cursed herself. Of course! They'd been stalling so that their surprise attack was a surprise, waiting until the other group stopped being vigilant! How could she have been so stupid?
They lost. Sabrina and Moth took each other out- they ran into each other trying to get out of their trees- and the other three were overpowered by the sheer size of their opponents. They all headed back to the Beast, Sabrina humiliated.
"That was pathetic." The Beast told them. "I know this was new, but I expected you to last longer."
Sabrina decided at that moment that she couldn't take it anymore, screw the Beast's opinion of her. It's not like he wasn't disappointed in her already. So she started shouting: "It's not our fault!" She exploded. "Ariel was already exhausted, and Moth stole my body so I'm stuck in hers, and neither of us can use each other's powers like we're supposed to, and she was the leader, but she's awful at it, so none of us had clear directions, and if one of the others had taken over as the leader, we'd have gotten in trouble! So of course we failed! We were destined to lose from the start!"
Once she was quiet, the Beast waited, then asked, "Are you finished?"
She nodded.
"Good." He said, and the fact that he wasn't raising his voice was almost scarier than it would have been if he had. "You know, don't you, that I will not tolerate being spoken to like that, yes? And you knew the rules when you picked your groups, yes? You knew the conditions of yourselves and your groupmates? And you knew the condition of the person you picked to be the leader, and the person who could have been your alternative? Yet you still chose Moth?"
"Yes." Sabrina muttered grumpily.
"Then you could have avoided the situation, but didn't. It is your own fault. And now, on top of doing miserably, you yelled at me. You have detention with me tonight. No excuses. And I want you to write me an essay on why what you did is inappropriate."
Stinging with humiliation, Sabrina nodded.