"That's Jacob," mom said as she pointed at one of the figures on the screen. "That's my great-grandfather."

  Harper and I were standing behind mom and Ellie, who were sitting at the kitchen table looking at mom's ptop. Mom wanted to see that conspiracy website my best friend got all her information from, and now we were all coming to terms with the fact that the site was pretty much telling the truth.

  Amelia was the only one who wasn't interested, she decided she'd had enough of the whole mess and headed upstairs to her room.

  "Wow," Ellie mumbled as she stared at the picture on the screen. "So that's the guy who opened the rift, the guy who tried to end the world. He was right there all along, and nobody even knew it."

  "I never met him of course," mom said quietly. She slowly shook her head as she continued, "He died before my mother was born. But I've seen pictures of him, and my mother and grandfather made sure to tell Leslie and I all the stories. They tried to make him sound like something special, someone important. When the truth is he was just a madman."

  Jacob Weimann, or by that time he was known as James Williams, didn't look like someone bent on ending the world. He was just another typical science type, along with all the other scientists in the old photos. He was a tall slim man with short dark hair, dressed in bck trousers and a white b coat. He had a sort of severe expression on his face, like a guy who took everything way too seriously, but even that didn't look out of pce in the pictures.

  About the only surprise was my great-great-grandfather appeared younger than I expected, like a man in his forties. But that fit with what mom said. Apparently he was born in nineteen-ten, so he was only forty-eight years old when he died in fifty-eight.

  Eventually mom and Ellie continued scrolling through that conspiracy site until they got to some pictures of the magical girls. Then they stopped and mom stared at those for a bit.

  "I don't know if this is supposed to be a secret or not," I said quietly, "So maybe keep this to yourselves? But according to Fiona the magical girls all have code-names based on their colours. The white one is Lily, blue is Azura, green is Peri, purple is Violet, and pink is Rosa."

  My cheeks coloured slightly as I continued, "So um, I guess that means my magical girl name is supposed to be Rosa. Except Fiona was also calling me Rosie, when I was in my pink form. Which would mean Bke is my civilian name. Or my secret identity or something."

  Ellie smiled at me, "That's so cool! So she's Violet, you're Rosa. Does she know the others? Are they still around?"

  "She said she knows them," I nodded. "Not the original ones though, not the ones from those pictures. I guess the current group are their descendants? Grandkids maybe?"

  Mom was still slowly scrolling through the pictures, but she stopped at another one and pointed. "That's Heribert, or Herb. My grandfather, your great-grandfather."

  I looked then suppressed a shudder as the picture she was pointing at sent a chill down my spine.

  It depicted one of the generic-looking young servicemen, a guy who barely looked twenty. He was average height and build, with short-cut dark hair. His skin had a bit of a tan, and he was dressed in the same olive-drab fatigues as all the other army guys.

  The reason the image gave me a chill wasn't so much the unremarkable guy, but the fact that he was standing next to and apparently talking with the original pink magical girl. The same magical girl we all knew he eventually killed some twenty years ter.

  Looking at him a little closer, it was almost like I could see it in his eyes. Like he was there working for his dad, and those magical girls were trying to stop them. He had to know that someday he'd try and kill the girl he was talking to.

  I finally turned away and sighed, "It's all too much. I don't want to believe this stuff, about our family and our history. I don't want to be descended from a crazy mad scientist bent on world destruction. It's like something out of a movie or anime, it's not real."

  "It's ok Bke," Harper said as he put an arm around my shoulders and pulled me into a light hug.

  I sighed as I leaned my head against his shoulder, "It's not ok. I'm gd Jacob failed, but I hate that Herb managed to kill the original Rosa. And I hate that her ring spent all those years since then with him and my grandmother."

  "Fiona said she was sent to try and recover it," I added. "Maybe Rosa had kids, maybe it was meant for someone else? Except it's been with a bunch of evil people instead for all those years."

  "Not any more Bke," Ellie said as she got up from the table. "Now it's yours, and I know you're not evil. Maybe that's why it worked for you, when it didn't work for anyone else in your family?"

  She slipped an arm around my waist so I was in the middle of a three-way hug, between the strong handsome jock and the cute tomboy. I raised up my arms to hug them both back, but her words reminded me of something else Fiona said.

  It came out as a half-whisper as I told them, "I'm pretty sure the original Rosa was trans. Fiona said something about that earlier this afternoon. Maybe that's why nobody else in our family was able to make the ring work? Maybe it only works for trans girls?"

  Mom turned towards me to respond but hesitated when she saw how my friends were both hugging me. Meanwhile I felt my cheeks heating up, and I couldn't help wondering what she was thinking. Like was she shocked to see me hugging Harper? Or was it more of a surprise that I was hugging Ellie? Or maybe the fact that both of them were holding me at the same time was what caught her off-guard.

  Whatever was going through her mind she decided to keep it to herself. Instead she asked, "Did Fiona say anything about what else she and the other magical girls were pnning? Are they going to go after my mother? Or my sister?"

  "I don't know," I sighed as I shook my head. "I'm sorry mom, there was a lot of stuff she wouldn't say. She accepted that you're not like your mother or grandfather, and said she'd been misinformed and stuff? I have a feeling she's going to contact whoever sent her here, to let them know that you're not involved. And I'm positive she's going to tell them that I've got the pink ring and I'm the new Rosa."

  Ellie held me a little tighter as she asked, "Do you think they're going to ask you to go join them? Are they going to haul you away to magical girl school or something?"

  I grimaced but shook my head again, "No. I doubt there's anything like that, but even if there was I wouldn't go. I don't want to leave you or Harper or mom or Amelia."

  "What about your grandmother?" Harper asked warily. "We know she's doing something up north, whatever it is she's starting next week. I mean, we're pretty sure she's not really spending a month and a half in the middle of nowhere to study sor winds, right?"

  The cute tomboy pointed out, "Whatever she's doing she can't reproduce Jacob's work. I don't care what kind of connections or high tech stuff she gets access to as a physics prof, there's no way she's got her hands on a hydrogen bomb. So she can't open a new rift."

  All three of us looked at my mom, and I was positive mom would agree with Ellie. Except instead of confirming what my best friend said, mom just looked uneasy.

  After a few seconds she sighed, "My family have had almost seventy years to improve on what Jacob started. He used atomic bombs because that's what he knew, it's what he had avaible. And at the time I'm sure they were considered very new and exciting. But they were also expensive, and as dangerous to him as they were everyone else. Frankly, I believe using such weapons was more a matter of resorting to brute force, to literally smash open a rift."

  "What scares me most is the possibility that my mother's come up with something new," mom added quietly. "Something a lot more subtle than setting off a nuclear bomb in the arctic."

  After a pause she reminded us, "We know my mother isn't going alone. According to the university website she's taking some colleagues and some students. Plus there'll be guides and perhaps other people accompanying the expedition. I can't help wondering how many of them might be accomplices, there to help my mother achieve her true goal. And how many of those people she might be pnning to use as unwilling sacrifices..."

  Harper sighed, "Damn."

  I felt a cold weight in my gut as I said, "We have to do something, we have to stop her."

  "So what can we do?" Ellie asked. "And is this something we can even do on our own? Or should we try and get some help?"

  Harper frowned as he pointed out, "I want to help as much as you do Ellie, but we're just normal ordinary people. If we try and get involved in this stuff, odds are we're just going to get hurt."

  Unfortunately he made a very good point. And it came across loud and clear, thanks to that big nasty bruise he still had on the side of his face from the day before.

  I grimaced, "Harper's right. I don't want to see either of you hurt, and we already know these people are willing to use violence. And we also know some of them might have access to magic, which honestly seems even scarier."

  That left a frown on my best friend's face. She sighed, "Yeah ok good point. I hate to admit it, but it's actually kind of terrifying to even think about that. Like how would you defend against something when you can't see it and don't even understand how it works?"

  "Unless..." she added hopefully as she looked towards my mom. "I don't suppose there's anything you can do, Mrs. Palmer? Like to protect us? Or maybe you could even teach us some stuff, so we can take care of ourselves?"

  To my surprise mom didn't dismiss the idea out of hand. In fact she actually seemed to be considering it. After a couple seconds she finally answered, "I need to think it over Ellie. Actually would you kids please excuse me for a while? It's been a very difficult day, for all of us. I think I could use a little quiet time right now."

  "Sure mom," I nodded.

  My friends and I all grabbed some more drinks, then the three of us went to sit on the living-room sofa together. Meanwhile mom packed up her ptop and took it with her as she retreated upstairs to her bedroom.

  "So Bke," Ellie said after we were all comfortable, "I guess the whole idea of timing your changes and trying to plot out how that worked has gone out the window?"

  I winced as I nodded, "Yeah pretty much. I definitely wasn't keeping track or timing anything when it all got all crazy after lunch."

  Harper asked, "How long did you stay in magical-mode after the fight with Fiona? I mean, can you make a ballpark guess, since I know you weren't watching the time."

  It took me a few seconds to think about it before I replied, "It may have been fifteen or twenty minutes? Then we both switched back to 'civilian mode' to talk."

  "Then I switched to 'magic mode' again for the drive home," I added, "Since Fiona didn't have a spare helmet. So that was probably another thirty or forty minutes."

  Ellie frowned, "So you switched three times today, including the ten minutes this morning before we left? And the st time you were in guy-mode was about twenty-four hours ago, when those guys jumped you at work."

  I sighed, "Yeah. I know it was just yesterday but so much has happened since then, it feels like a week ago."

  Harper and I both watched as my best friend dug her phone out then opened up the calcutor app. We stayed quiet while Ellie spent the next minute or two doing math stuff, then she finally looked up at me with a slight frown.

  "So this is just a bit better than a wild guess," she stated, "Because there's so many variables and questions about how it actually works. Plus we don't even have accurate numbers to begin with. But assuming the progression remains the same and assuming your estimates were close... Odds are you won't turn back to your masc form for another four and a half days."

  After a brief pause she added, "Basically not until Saturday morning. And that's assuming you don't use the ring again between now and then. Otherwise each time you use it is just going to push that back even further."

  I felt some butterflies in my stomach as my eyes drifted down to my left hand. I found myself staring at that bck ring wrapped around my pinky finger. Then in a soft quiet voice I commented, "I could just use this for a half hour every day, and I'll never ever be my guy self again."

  "I wonder if that's what it was like for the original Rosa?" I added just as softly.

  Harper gave me another hug as he asked, "How do you feel about that Bke? You don't sound as excited as I'd have expected."

  It took me a few seconds to think about it before I could answer him. Then I shrugged, "I guess I'm happy, but also a little shocked? This time yesterday I wasn't even sure what I was going to do, I thought I'd be in guy-mode for at least a few more days. I thought maybe over the summer I'd begin transitioning normally, then use the ring so I could show up at college in girl mode?"

  "All that went out the window when those guys attacked me at work yesterday," I sighed. "Then we got attacked today too. Maybe they'll try again tomorrow? That's what's kind of freaking me out. Not that I want to go back to my guy body, but it's still a bit weird thinking that it might already be gone forever. I only found the ring on Friday. Now it's Tuesday and my whole life's been turned upside-down."

  Ellie slipped an arm around me as well, so I had both my friends hugging me again from either side. She leaned a little closer and said, "I know it's been a few crazy days Bke, and from the sound of it that's not going to change any time soon. But whatever happens, we're both here for you."

  "Right on," Harper agreed. "We're here for you Bke. No matter what."

  PurpleCatGirl