It’s the eye of the tiger!

Emma sighed as she picked herself up from the floor, inspecting the tattered remains of her bodysuit. With a quick muttering of ‘Loyal is my heart’ and a flash, she was Nate again, twenty feet away. Nate examined his own bodysuit, similarly destroyed but not identically to Emma’s. He’d figured out that his and Emma’s bodysuits were actually two wholly separate items. Additionally, transitioning between bodies resulted in him wearing what that body had last worn – a feature he was sure would be of immense use in the future.

Sadly, the downside of such a setup was the need for double the clothing, or clothing replacement, as it was. Hopefully one of the girls bought some form of repairing enchantment, or he was going to go through multiple sets of clothing any time he really tested out his superpowers.

Luckily he’d been provided with a number of spare sets of suits for both his forms. He swapped back to put on a female suit, still amazed at how natural the feminine form felt. He wasn’t turned on by his alter ego’s body in the slightest. And Emma was a knockout, with a body to match. Hell, even just having tits always in eyesight should have been arousing. But they were his tits, Emma’s tits, and so even touching them didn’t do much. Sure, he hadn’t tried to masturbate in this form, but clearly there was some extra magic mumbo-jumbo that was preventing him from becoming the latest take on Narcissus.

Finishing reclothing as Emma, he became Nate once more and set about reclothing his regular self. Only to be interrupted halfway through by a wolf whistle to his rear.

“Mmm, I picked a good time to check up on you, Master,” Serena teased.

Nate rolled his eyes as he resumed putting back on the tight-fitting bodysuit, pulling the suit up to hide his junk and doing his best not to blush. That would teach him to change in the locker room – he’d not bothered considering he was alone in training room 2.

“So how are you feeling?” Serena asked as he reclothed.

Nate considered the question. “Solid,” he finally answered.

Yes, solid was the best description. Nate had spent that last forty minutes testing his durability, and discovered that he was now VERY hard to hurt.

“And that’s a problem,” he continued, working his arms into his sleeves.

“Oh?” Serena asked, stepping forward to help.

“Thanks,” he said for her assistance. “Yeah, it’s a problem. Because the Contestants know that I have an A-Rank Durability power, and though they don’t know the specifics, they know at the very least that I’m bulletproof. So if the Mastermind shows up with her first power being bulletproof…”

“It’ll raise questions, yes,” Serena agreed.

“Which itself raises a question as to why you let them know about my transformation.” Nate narrowed his eyes at Serena.

“Would you prefer the alternative? That we hide your superpowers?”

“Obviously! That would mean I could actually use my powers as Emma without raising suspicion.”

“But what about when the Contestants realize they don’t know your powers and come asking? Do you tell them? Or hide it, and raise their suspicions further that there is something you’re hiding? The Contestants are not idiots, Master, especially dear Samantha.”

Serena was right, none of the Contestants would he consider as dumb, but Sam was a level above smart. If his mother hadn’t held Sam back from graduating, it was very likely Sam could have graduated and gone to college two years ago. Sam was brilliant, truly a chip off the old block if Mom’s tales of their father was to be believed, and his grades and talents showed it. Nate wouldn’t have been surprised if his brother had gotten accepted to every college he’d applied to, and the youngest Hawkins had not been modest in his applications.

Nate sighed. “Well, why’d you have to go and tell them that I was getting powers, then. It feels like you’re stacking the deck against me as a Villain here.”

“And then let them accidentally discover your powers at some point in the next 100 days? Do you really believe you’d be able to last through this whole thing without displaying any of the powers you have? Plus, they’d find out you have the exact same powerset as their first villain.”

Nate sighed again. “True, true. Alright, fine, I get that this is the best case scenario. Just sucks that it’s going to make my job much harder.”

“Nate,” Serena put a hand on his chest, “I am not intending to make this difficult for you. In fact, if you have ideas for ways to make your portrayal of the villain role even better, I may be able to accommodate you. The goal here is to have a satisfying season – any requests that might lead to that end I will take very seriously.”

Nate arched a brow. “Really?”

Serena nodded, “Yes.”

Nate tilted his head, thinking on the idea. A few moments later, a devious smile stole across his face, “In that case, I think I have a few ideas….”

Alex huffed a sigh as she stepped out of the Eldritch Library. She’d spent the last six hours poring over the options for her grimoire, and she felt no further ahead than when she started. To start with, the library was apparently under some form of time dilation, so three hours inside was an hour outside, so Alex was starving, feeling almost like she’d skipped lunch. On top of that, she’d barely made a dent in the number of books that contained cantrips or lesser spells – the selection was truly so vast. Every book was helpfully titled, but since she had no idea what she should be looking for, she’d floundered.

It didn’t help that her grimoire had 36 pages in it. Considering so-called cantrips took up a single page, while the most elaborate lesser spells she found took up three pages, front and back, she could wind up with anywhere between 72 and 13 spells at the end of the day, depending on her choices. The choice paralysis was getting to her.

She needed advice. And as she always did when she needed advice, there was one person she was going looking for first. Nate.

Across both lifetimes, Nate was easily the person Alex would have considered closest in the world. Alex got Nate, and Nate got Alex, on an almost fundamental level. In fact, she’d often said in her male life that if one of them had been a girl they’d have met their soulmates as toddlers, joking that if one of them woke up and found themselves a girl they’d promise to hook up with the other. Though her female life was evidence for both of them being unable to fulfill such a promise, each of them chickening out in fear of losing the relationship they had.

This wasn’t to say Alex didn’t love Vivian, or trust her mother for advice, but with Nate, she knew that she could trust him with anything and he would have her back. In both lives.

As such, she was the first one done with her training, choosing to forgo the showers in the training room. Instead, she beelined for the elevator, intending to head down to the second training room to ask Nate for help.

Then she remembered what Serena had said about Nate’s training, and she paused, her finger on the button for the elevator. Hesitating a moment, she instead moved back to the locker room, retrieving her phone to shoot off a text to Nate.

[Hey, u still training or can i com ask a q?]

She waited a few moments before seeing an ellipsis pop up showing Nate was typing.

[Sure, come down, elvator unlocked]

Alex was slightly surprised at the insinuation that Nate’s floor was locked from the elevator when he was training, but then she remembered she had almost forgotten the warning herself. Perhaps more caution was a good thing.

She went back over to the elevator and pressed the button for the second training level. A short while later, and she stepped back out into a training room that mirrored the one above. Only it was covered in scorch marks.

Indeed, the signs of Nate’s training session were everywhere – clearly her best friend hadn’t gone lightly when it came to testing out his new durability. Alex gulped, her face slightly pale at the thought of what caused all these scorch marks.

“Nate?” she asked aloud, not seeing her friend in the open room. Getting no response, she moved over to the entrance to the locker room, repeating her call. “Nate?”

“Yeah, one minute, just getting dressed,” came the response from inside.

Smirking, Alex swaggered right in.

Nate looked freshly showered, his hair still glistening, and he was bent over on the bench in the locker room, pulling on his socks. He looked up at the sound of her approach.

“Really, Alex?” he asked, exasperated.

“I am not a patient woman.”

“I’m aware. Nor were you a patient man.”

“Exactly, just keep thinking of me as a man. It’s normal for me to be in a locker room with you.”

“Man-you didn’t ogle me any of those times we were in a locker room,” Nate countered, standing up to put his shirt back on.

“I am not ogling,” Alex objected as she ogled.

Nate merely raised an eyebrow as he continued to button up his shirt. Alex played along and put on an exaggerated frown as he finished buttoning. Seeing her face, Nate laughed, then turned back to the locker to get his shoes. “Alright, what’s up? Or were you just looking for a reverse strip tease?”

“That had far too little gyration to qualify as any kind of strip tease. But yeah, I was wondering if I could get your take on my power.”

“Your power? The grimoire one, right?”

Alex nodded. “Yeah, that’s the one.” She explained the issue she was running into – far too many possible options and having difficulty even getting started due to the permanence of her decisions.

Nate thought for a moment. “Well, it’d probably be best to talk with your team about it.”

“My team?”

“Yeah, the other Contestants. I mean, you’re all competing with each other, but when it comes to the challenges, you’re all a team, right? Way I see it, what you’re describing means you have the most versatile possible superpower of all of them. You could go a lot of different ways with your power, cover a lot of different roles, but the rest of them are already covering some of those roles. So, talk with them, figure out how you can cover the roles none of them can.”

“Of course! God, I’m an idiot sometimes!” Alex berated herself.

“Only sometimes?” Nate joked. “Nah, you weren’t being an idiot, you just got so caught up in the possibilities you weren’t seeing the bigger picture. Forest for the trees and all that. But yeah, lean on the rest of your team, it’s the biggest advantage you guys have in the challenges.”

He then sighed and scratched his head, “Honestly, I envy you that. Wish I had that kind of help in my trials.”

Alex perked up at that. “What? Trials?”

“Oh? Serena didn’t tell you guys about that?”

Alex shook her head.

“Huh. Maybe she hasn’t gotten around to it yet. Basically, whenever you Contestants have a Challenge, I’m faced with a trial. A sort of direct testing of my powers and mind, is what Serena described it as.”

Alex frowned, “That’s a bummer. I kind expected you to be our overwatch or something – our man-in-the-chair as it were.”

Nate shook his head, “Me too, but apparently they’re milking us for all the content possible. Serena did promise I’d get to watch the Challenge, though, so I can at least critique and provide helpful suggestions after the fact.”

“Mmm. So… wait, what’s your reward?”

“Reward?”

“Yeah. I mean, you aren’t competing for VP like we are, so there’s got to be some other reason motivating you to perform well in the trials, right? Wait, by your response, does that mean she’s giving you punishments instead? Do you get a horrible transformation? Do one of us get a horrible transformation!?”

“No! No, there is a reward, and if I fail nothing changes, don’t worry, no punishments, no transformations. Damn, way to leap to the worst-case scenario immediately.”

“Good. So, what’s the reward?”

“The reward?” Nate hesitated, avoiding eye contact with Alex. “It’s, uh…”

“What? Is it a kinky reward?” Alex asked, raising a brow.

“No! Damn it, no. It’s not.” Nate sighed. “It’s just… Look, Serena told me not to tell any of you about the reward.”

“Oh?” Alex asked, in her best ‘someone is in trouble’ voice.

“Yeah, it wasn’t an order or a rule, but she… Look, I’ll tell you the first reward, okay. It’s… it’s a veto.”

“A veto?”

“Yeah. Each round I get a veto. I can pick one of the transformations you guys get and veto it, meaning you get the second place transformation instead.”

Alex’s jaw slowly dropped as she considered the ramifications. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah. It’s… a pretty good reward. And I imagine the following rewards won’t be any worse.”

“Ho. Ly. Shit. Fuck. Damn it, Nate, why’d you have to tell me!?”

“Because you asked!”

“But Serena told you not to!”

“And you looked like you were going to tear me a new one if I stuck with that!”

“I know just… Fuck. Damn it!”

Alex punched Nate in the arm, an action as effective as if she’d done the same thing to one of the lockers due to Nate’s new superpower.

“Ow,” she cried, clutching her wounded fist.

“Shit, are you okay?” Nate asked, bending over her to cradle her hand. “Sorry, I should have dodged. I’m not used to this power yet.”

“It’s... fine. It didn’t really hurt. Just because you stop bullets doesn’t mean your skin is actually hard. It’s still skin, and flesh underneath, but damn it, ow! I’m a girl now, not a boy, but some of those instincts still occasionally take over.”

“Yeah, sorry.”

“Shit. Next time, listen to Serena when she gives you what amounts to a suggestion, dumbass. You should have kept your damn mouth shut and let her do the explaining. Now I know, and you know that I know. Knowing you, that means I just doubled the pressure, because you can’t help but shoulder my expectations, you big dumb galoot.” She reached out and hugged the big dumb galoot.

Nate sighed, returning the hug. “Yeah. I kinda knew that would happen. But I wanted you, of all people, to know, Alex.”

Alex didn’t respond, simply increasing the strength of her hug. It was weird, hugging him with his new power. Nate had never been a frail man, but now, it felt like he might be carved of stone, if not for the slight give and warmth of flesh. He felt incredibly solid now, an attribute Alex hadn’t before considered associated with masculinity but was rapidly reconsidering. As she felt her arousal start to build, she pushed out of the hug, doing her best to hide her fluster.

“W-well now I know, and there’s no unknowing. So, I’m going to be selfish and hold onto my expectations. I expect you to beat your trial now, Nate, so don’t let me down. That veto could truly be vital. But at the same time, DO NOT tell me any of your rewards going forwards. Even if you succeed this first time, I highly doubt Serena’s going to make it easy enough for you to win every time, and I’d rather keep a vague hopefulness for something good than get my hopes up for some concrete benefit, okay? Let it be a wonderful surprise when you succeed instead of a huge letdown when you fail.”

Nate nodded and gave a mock salute, “Aye aye, capitán.”

Alex rolled her eyes. “Alright, I’m heading up to lunch, now, you coming along?”

Nate nodded, following along as they moved out of the locker room towards the elevator. “Yeah, I don’t know about you, lady librarian, but I worked up an appetite.”

“Oh, I’m starving. Turn’s out I’ve actually got a book-filled Hyperbolic Time Chamber – I spent six hours in there.”

“No shit!? That’s fucking awesome! We should see if we can talk Serena into getting us some sensu beans.”

“Can probably make an extendable pole with enchantment, so we’re set there.”

“True! Wonder if we can somehow capture a cloud and make it rideable, too?”