Trigger warning: Homophobia

-Amity-

The blight manor / Friday January 20th, 22:00 hrs

Amity tapped her heels impatiently as she looked at her reflection in the bathroom, checking everything for the hundredth time. Her make up looked perfect and her hair was tied up in a high ponytail, the lavender dress that she was forced to wear for this occasion was fine and with her purple gem collar that her mom gave her when she was 10. Everything was ok, but that didn't stop her from freaking out.

The mayor was throwing a gala tonight and all of his supporters (the rich folks on town) were present. Grant had to make several public statements ever since the existence of magic was made public but this was a different case. Last weekend The wild witch appeared again, she had to fight against a large dragon made out of fingers that came through a portal. The fight was recorded and streamed from all angles since it happened right on top of the center of the city and it had been a breaking point of some sorts. Since the magical attacks stopped happening over a month ago several people thought this had been the end of it, but now they were back and people demanded answers from the mayor.

She knew that Grant had no idea what was happening, nor how to stop it, but it was going to be interesting to see him try to explain it anyway.

"Ok, I got this" She told her reflection "All I have to do is stand there and smile while mom gets voters by lying about statistics and the night will go by fast"

She took one last breath to gain courage and stepped out of the bathroom she was in. The party was the typical rich gathering: Everyone wearing clothes that cost more than a hundred bucks, fancy food that didn't actually fill your belly, people chatting about how much money they earned through trading stocks, and everyone laughed at some bad jokes with people they hated, pretty standard stuff. She made her way to her parent's stand, conscious that the mayor was about to make his speech soon and she was required to be there whether she liked it or not.

She walked near groups of investors from Blight industries that knew her since she was a child, some of them stopped to greet her and she forced herself to smile and return the gesture with a polite bow. After a while she managed to get past all the social interactions and reached her parent's table. Her mom was discussing with someone at the side and her father was looking at the swan-folded napkins that were on the table as if they were the most interesting thing ever.

"Mittens!" Her mom exclaimed with a smile as she approached "At last you've arrived, I was beginning to think that you ditched us"

"I'm sorry, mother" She gave a polite bow "Will mayor Grant be giving his speech now?"

"Soon, but first I'd like you to meet one of our voters and the newest potential investor"s and probably one of our newest investors, why don't you present yourself?" She gestured towards a person that was behind Amity.

She turned around to greet them but froze when she saw the man. He was from an asian descent, black hair, nice smile, fairly tall, mole on left cheek, and he had some eyes that really reminded her of someone. She had only seen him in pictures, but she could recognize him still.

"Well hello! It's a pleasure to finally meet you, Amity" Leah's father shook her hand "I'm Shawn Trang, but I think that you already knew that!"

She just absentmindedly nodded and forced herself to smile. Her mind was numb, how could he be here? She racked her brain trying to remember if Leah ever told him what he did for a living, he was a math teacher in an elementary school? Or maybe an instructor of some kind, she was sure he worked in a school. Whatever the case was, she was sure that the man wasn't as nearly rich or influential enough to be there with them, especially to be a Blight industries investor, why would he be there?

She looked at her mom as they went back to their seats, she wasn't saying anything with her expression, just her usual cordial smile, but it was irking Amity. There was no way she knew about it, right? She had only told Luz and Viney about her relationship and none of them would've told her, she never posted anything on social media about her and all of their dates were in her hometown or in the library, places where her mother didn't have any access, there was zero chance that she would know about-

"I gotta say that Leah's descriptions don't give you justice, you are really beautiful!" His smile was kind when he commented on this, but it sounded like a death sentence in her ears.

"Leah did it?" There was no way. She had told her that she wasn't out to her parents yet.

She looked at Odalia with a furious glare, forgetting her manners and fully ignoring the adult trying to have a conversation with her. Odalia's smile wavered, but she returned her stern look. She was about to speak up when Mr Tang spoke up again.

"Ahh, there's my girl! Did you have any trouble finding the bathroom, sweety?"

Her neck got a whiplash upon seeing Leah walking towards them. She was wearing a white dress and heels with make up that made her look just like any other of the rich daughter present in their manor. She looked uncomfortable, out of place, and she refused to look Amity in the eyes.

"No dad…" She said with a sigh.

"Excellent, now come sit" His dad motioned the empty seat to his right but then he changed his mind "Oh wait, your girlfriend would probably want you to sit near her, right Amity?"

"Wait" Alador stopped looking at the table decoration for just one second and spoke for the first time in the evening "Girlfriend?"

She decided that she'd had enough at this point.

"Excuse me sir" She addressed mister Trang "Mother, can I talk to you for a second?" She got up and looked at her with rage

Her mother realized that she wasn't going to take a no for an answer, so she excused herself from the table and made a motion for Amity to follow her. The two of them left the party and stepped outside on a balcony, the chilly air froze the skin that was exposed by her dress and she regretted not picking up her jacket.

"Well, what is it?" If the January cold bothered her mother, she did not show it.

"You know exactly what it is! Why Are they here?! A-and how do you know about…" She couldn't finish that sentence.

"About your little girlfriend? Oh please Amity, did you really think that I wouldn't find out about that? Because that's a bit silly of you if that was the case"

Amity let out a frustrating scream and punched a nearby wall, her knuckles hurt.

"SILLY? Was it silly to think that I could have something of my own without you intervening on it? Was it silly to expect to have privacy?" She yelled at her.

"Calm down Mittens, you'll scare off the people" Odalia said in a condescending tone.

"Don't change the subject! Why would you do this? To control me? Are you gonna force Leah to break up with me?" Her vision was getting blurry from the tears in her eyes and she was having a hard time breathing.

"Do you really think I would do that?" Odalia asked her.

"I don't know, that's the scary part! I want to think that you wouldn't be able to do it, but at the same time I know you'd do anything to gain power and prestige, and DON´T say it's 'for the family' when the things you do hurt us. I mean look at this" She gestured towards the party as she caught her breath "You couldn't let me have this on my own! I was happy with it because this wasn't something that you put in my life for your sake, it was something for 'Amity' not 'Blight'. Maybe with time I'd have introduced you two, like common people do!"

"We are not common people Amity, I made sure of it" Odalia retorted.

"Oh yes! I forgot that we are royalty now" Amity said in a mocking tone and did a fake bow "What are you going to do? Set me up with some rich prince in europe?"

"Of course not! Amity, I get that this may seem extreme for you but I am not against your relationship" She said in a cutting tone.

"You… aren't?" She was sure that this was all a ploy to separate them.

"No! If it was for me I'd let you two to keep having hidden dates for as long as you wanted. Granted, it does hurt me a little that you wouldn't trust me with this-"

"Your actions today proved that I was right by doing that" She huffed and crossed her arms.

"Fine, point taken"

"But then… Why are they here? He's a teacher and their family isn't rich, why on earth would you take them here and make him an investor?"

Her mother opened her mouth to respond but someone appeared on the umbral.

"Odalia! There you are" A person from the party appeared in the umbral "The mayor is about to give his speech, come on!"

She gave her a look of ´we'll speak about this later´and went after him. She knew that she wasn't going to get more info from her so she went inside, it was getting too cold anyway. However, when she got up to the door her mother was there and held her hand to stop her.

"Mom?" She asked.

"Amity…" Her eyes were oddly bright, as if she was allowing her her emotions to show for the first time in god knew how long "I'm sorry"

She didn't give her time to react and went back inside. Amity was left stunned. That bit felt genuine but, what was she sorry for? Bringing her girlfriend's dad here? Spying on her? All the things that she did to her in the past? Everything at once? She did not know but she was feeling nervous about it.

"Well standing here in the cold isn't going to help me. Let's just get this stupid speech over with"

When she got back inside most of the lights were off and everyone else was back on their seats, except her mother who was standing near the mayor in the center of the room, politicians that supported Grant's campaign. The mayor addressed everyone and started speaking. She hurried to get back to her table without making any noise. When she arrived she noticed that Leah wasn't looking at her direction deliberately, she supposed it was a natural reaction for the situation they were in.

"Amity" Her dad whispered "Can we talk?"

"Not now dad" She just wanted to get this over with.

"Why didn't you tell me that you had a girlfriend?" He asked her.

"Oh great" She forgot that her dad had heard the whole debacle and she still hasn't come out to him.

"Just… don't be weird about it, ok?" She whispered while the mayor spoke.

"Why would I be weird about it?" He wondered with a furrowed brow.

"Why would-… because she is a girl?" She had no idea what she was supposed to say in this situation.

"And what's wrong with that?" He asked "You like girls"

"Yeah but that's not-" She paused as an idea came to her head "Wait… You know that I'm gay?"

"Well, yeah" He stated like it was something obvious

If it wasn't because she was in a room full of people and she was painfully aware of the look her mother was giving her, she would have screamed right then and there.

"You knew?!" She hissed.

"Was I… not supposed to?" He said with a genuine look, as if he was just asking the most mundane stuff and not turning her world upside down.

"B-buu-bu-bu-but how?" She did not know how to continue this conversation.

"I do not understand the question" He cocked his head "You used to marry your barbies together even after your mother bought you a Ken doll, you always read books with two girls holding hands in the cover, you like to admire other girls from the distance whenever you think are alone, you never wanted to talk to boys, not even after puberty" He kept enlisting those things and Amity flushed harder and harder with each item of the list "...there was also the time when you insisted to be left alone in your room with the daughter of one of our investors when they came for dinner, oh! And you have that flag that looks like a bacon in your room! I asked my assistant the other day what it was and she told me-"

"Ok, that's enough!" She shushed him before the people near them heard him. She checked around to see if anyone was looking at them, but all the other guests were paying attention to the mayor's speech "Don't speak now, mom is watching! We'll talk later" She whispered to him.

Her dad just nodded and faced forwards, meanwhile Amity locked herself in an internal struggle because she didn't even know how to process the new information that she was given. Her father knew all this time she was a lesbian but didn't talk to her about it because he thought she wasn't hiding it? There were so many layers to that that she didn't know how to digest it. First of all: She guessed that she wasn't as good as hiding things as she thought, second: She didn't know if this spoke well about her dad's observation skills or if Odalia just sucked in that aspect, third: She did not know how to feel about her dad right now, on one hand he sucked at communicating and reaching out, but on the other… The fact that he did not feel the need to address her sexuality because he saw it as something normal spoke highly of him, at least in her view.

"Wait, does this mean that both my parents approve of me and I've been hiding these past few years for nothing?" She buried her face in her hands "I hate being a teenager…"

A second after she composed herself and forced her ears to listen to the mayor, it was bad enough that Odalia saw her chatting with her dad in the middle of the speech, she had to pay attention otherwise things would get worse with her mom. She could gush as much as she wanted in her diary later.

"...and to summarize, this financial year will be the one with the biggest budget yet!" Grant exclaimed happily and everyone clapped.

"Are they still talking about the economy? With everything else that's going on?" She could not believe them.

"Thank you, my friends" He raised his hands to calm the applause "However, I'm afraid that it's time to move to a less pleasant matter, it's not nice but it is something that we need to address: Those creatures wrecking our city" Everyone gasped at that.

"Finally" She rolled her eyes.

"I'm sure that all of you want answers and trust me, so do I. Apparently, I cannot be told all of the truth by the government because 'it's classified information', as if this wasn't about my own damn city!" Some people booed "But they did tell me something, a few weeks back they shared that these otherworldly beings are here for one reason and one reason alone, the wild witch!"

Everyone gasped and Amity did a double take. She could not believe her ears, were they seriously planning on blaming everything on her? On what basis?

"Now, I know what all of you are thinking: The wild witch? But she is a good guy! She stops those terrible creatures and saves people after all" He said in a mocking voice and then shook his head "I was hoping that we had learned to not take anything at face value at this point. For your information *I* never fell for the good guy act. Sure she saves people, but her powers have left clear that she is not a human, so what is she then? An alien? A government experiment? Time traveler? We don't know, I believe the government doesn't know, and we do not have a way of finding out. But you know what, friends? I honestly could not care less about any of it, speculating about something that we have no way of corroborating is for nutjobs who are into conspiracy theories, I am not here to theorize and install panic on all of you, I am here to tell you the facts, can someone put on the screen?"

After a clicking noise a screen descended from the ceiling, alongside a projector. It turned on and started projecting an image of the wild witch fighting a monster on the giant screen.

"The fact is that we do not know who this person is or where her allegiances lie, we don't even know if it's a she or even if it's just one of them!" The image on the screen changed to show different fights of the wild witch, and in each one of them her appearance was different: In one she was a redhead with pale skin while in the other she was tan with black hair "There are already a lot of conspiracies about this being a secret cult of wizards or something, but like I said, I am not here to speculate. I am here to act based on the information I can verify! I am not telling you this to sow the seeds of panic in you, I am doing this to help you see the truth!"

He raised his fist and people cheered.

"Let's start for what we can assess here" He pointed at the screen and the image changed to an angle closer to the witch's face "Regardless if these are several individuals or one person using different disguises (which is the most likely scenario given that we never get to see more than one witch) the important part is this one: Why would she hide her face? If she truly is a savior of humanity then she shouldn't have a problem with sharing her identity with us, right? This just tells me that she is hiding something, something that she doesn't want us to know!"

He slammed his fist on a table and people gasped. Amity, for her part, just rolled her eyes and wondered for the eleventh time how people could agree with him.

"Then let's move on to the next business: Her actions" Again the screen changed to show the wild witch fighting against several monsters "First of all, she always appears to fight the monsters that destroy our lovely city, almost like she knew where they were, that's suspicious, isn't it? Second, she creates almost as much, if not more, property damage than the creatures that she defeats, this tells me that she only wants to hunt down her prey, regardless of where it is or who is on the way. And third: when she leaves the scene in that staff of hers she doesn't fix the damage she helped create, what kind of irresponsibility is that? She can move objects through the air, create earth and wood out of nowhere, and shape materials with her mind. Surely something as mundane as repairing the building she just destroyed would be nothing to her, so why doesn't she do it? Let me answer you that question folks: She doesn't care about any of us"

There were a lot of hushed words and whispers, some agreeing, and some were more hesitant.

"I know, I know. ´But Grant, why does this have to do with all of it being her fault? Are we just going to believe what the government told you?' Well actually we don't have to just believe their words, because they gave me this fantastic video to show you, put it on!"

He pointed towards the screen and a video popped up. The camera was shaky and the quality was poor so it was clear that it wasn't done by a professional, but it was still understandable. It showed three people on top of a roof in the middle of a starry night, whoever was filming it was one floor below them but had gotten on top of the fire escape ladder to get a clear picture. The people were quite remarkable: A fellow with a golden mask and a white cape that hid most of his body, a person with a knight-like armor and helmet with blue hair coming out of it, and a massive man with a grey hood.

"This is getting out of hand" said the blue haired knight with a feminine voice "The wild witch keeps eluding capture from us and this time it was because the stupid cops intervened"

"I still say that we should try to work with the local authorities" Golden mask said "Once we tell them that the witch caused all of the monsters to appear and we are trying to arrest her they will be much more understanding"

"Uhhh, I don't think that would be the case" The big guy chipped in "They will be really pissed with us anyway. We are kinda guilty about a lot of other stuff still…"

Amity processed everything in several seconds. She had to admit that maybe there was some truth in it, the wild witch did tend to show up at the right moment in the right time after all, but she refused to believe that this was all a master plan and she was responsible for so much chaos. Her mother had trained her to survive the high society, which meant that she knew how to read people well; During her encounter in the library she got the impression that the witch could be clumsy and weird, but she was relatively harmless.

"See what I told you? This video was filmed last year by an anonymus person, presumably from before the fight with that grat dragon. Now, both the president and I are going to make two different statements tomorrow addressing this subject and the papers are going to cover it, so you people won't be the only ones to know.. However! I will tell you this to you right now: No matter the cost, I will make sure to bring this menace to justice and make her pay for all she has done!"

The crowd cheered and Amity just zoned out of the discussion when he started to talk about his campaign again. There was a lot of stuff he said that made sense, but at the end he just wasn't focusing on the problem itself, just a symptom to let out his hate. She was brought back from reality when someone shook her shoulder, she was surprised to see her mom back in her seat beside her.

"What? Is it over already?"

Odalia just shook her head but refused to speak further. Amity looked back at the mayor and she saw that he was still speaking.

"Lastly there's something I would like to talk about. There's been a certain discourse within the younger generations against my campaign, some stuff they misinterpreted and took out of context" he said with a bored face "At first it felt like the typical slander from the opposition, but then after I saw some manifestations against me I realized that there might be some people who might actually believe it so I would like to correct them. This is all about my stance with the gay marriage and how, apparently, saying that I'm against it makes me a 'homophobe' to some people" He used quotation marks

Amity wanted to eject herself into the stratosphere. She knew that the hate his campaign had gotten was big so he would need to do some damage control for his image, but she really did not want to listen to it.

"Now people might think that this means I hate gays, which is not the case. I do not care what happens in between two consenting adults, people can do whatever they want in their bedroom, but don't they see that their acts confuse our children?" he said with a totally serious look

He kept rambling for a bit and Amity contemplated if she could knock herself unconscious by banging her head against the table.

"...But finally, I wanted to talk about the marriage stuff. You see, I'm the type of fellow who cares about doing things the right way and that includes using the right words. In case you don't know, the use of the word marriage has always been related to the objective of generating offsprings. Not to mention that it comes from the old french Matrimoine which means 'to make a mother', alluding to creating children" He smirked as if he just said the most intelligent thing ever "So if we use that as basis then we cannot call the union of two men and two women a marriage, right?"

Everyone made cheering noises and Amity recoiled with disgust, why did her mom have to work for the bigot guy?

"But I know that my sound logic isn't going to work with our youth, my god those tiktoks really made kids stubborn, so I am going to prove that I do not have an issue with gays right now! Odalia, if you please?"

She looked at her mother with curiosity, but was surprised when she grabbed her hand and took her to the center of the room with the mayor. At first she wasn't alarmed because she thought that this was something that the whole Blight family was supposed to do, this was their house after all. But when she saw that Odalia stopped her dad from joining them with a hand gesture she knew it was going to be bad.

"Now there she is! How is my favorite niece today?" he said as he wrapped an arm around her and faced towards the audience. Amity tried not to cringe too much at Grant's words, he always called her that even if they weren't related "Amity Blight is an upstanding young woman with a great future and an amazing academic record. She is an example of what young people should aspire to, and also she is gay"

Her body went limp and her eyes popped out. She looked at him as if trying to decipher whether she imagined his words or not.

"You heard that right folks, she is gay and I could not be more proud of her! Instead of going to protests or parades she just focuses on being herself without bothering anyone about it, she and her cute girlfriend are free of being themselves all they want! Where is she? Oh, there she is!" He made a hand gesture and she saw with despair how Leah's father guided her towards them. The girl had a mortified expression and did not even look at her, the mayor put a hand over their shoulders and put himself in between them "These two young ladies know how to get it done, why don't you take us a picture? And tell everyone that the mayor does not hate gay people!"

As some of the crowd cheered and photographers started to come near them Amity started to hyperventilate. Even if only the voters were invited to this party they were still recording some segments for his campaign, they were going to take pictures and put it in the newspaper, not to mention that Boscha and Skara were there with their parents, they were going to tell everyone in the school, everyone was going to know it.

"Can we get a smile, Amity?" The photographer asked but she couldn't hear him, she couldn't hear anyone.

She tried to picture it, how everyone at school would react, how she might lose all the prestige she tried to gain: On top of the people that might bully her for being a lesbian, there were the others who were against Grant and might start hating her for this. It was just too much for her, the walls were closing in, all the eyes on her made her feel sick and dizzy. She couldn't tell when, but at some point she started running away from the scene. To where? She had no fucking clue, all she knew is that she couldn't be here. So she ran past the photographers, the guests, her mother's calls, the security guards, past the doors, the trees in her yard, everything was a blur to her tear stained eyes but it didn't matter to her.

She just kept running

Happy pride month mates! It's also my birthday month so hurray for me.

I hope I was able to write the queer stuff well. I do not have experience in those sorts of things, even though I'm queer myself. I discovered most of this stuff when I was an adult already and I think that there's a huge difference when you have to deal with this when you are a teenager, so tell me if I got stuff to improve in that matter.

I know that this may be a touchy subject for a lot of people and I apologize if I made you uncomfortable with it. That being said, I did like to challenge myself to tackle more serious topics, I think it helps me grow as a writer.

Btw do not try to fact check anything that Grant said about marriage, I made it up.