Page 72 of Not Like The Other Girls

“Hop on tight, Lily,” he growls, literally, once he’s in his bear form.

The said bear ends up with Lily, Queeny, and even her buff bodyguard on his back. He needed to be with his lady to keep her safe, Glycogen reasoned when he hopped on, nearly cracking Every’s bear spine in the process. In hindsight, Lily remembers that he has two metal wings in addition to his two functioning legs, and there is no real reason for him to need the ride. Guess he just wanted to hitch along for laughs and funsies, and Every with his little bear brain forgot that fact about his wings completely.

“Come on, faster, bro.” Lily pats his back as they all make the journey across the field back towards the town gates they came from.

“I’m not your bro,” he mutters in an extra-deep, extra-growly voice than his normal one.

“If not, then go, chop chop.”

The bear, formerly a CEO who goes by the name Every, hops on his four short, fat legs like a bunny, overtaking most of the Armice generals and even Ferny himself. Lily gives him the bird as she passes by, his rockstar blonde hair whipped over his face from the wind effects.

So dramatic, as always.

Lily turns around to check the situation going on, and she spots a few more bears rumbling behind them. Fucking weird, but she’s seen so much weirder shit today, so she refrains from wording her thoughts out like usual.

See, Lily-girl sure can keep her mouth shut once in a while.

And naturally, without the need for ball gags or microfoam tapes.

The group reaches the town area, marked by their anti-rat nets and sophisticated gate, which Every the bear hops over easily like that drunk cow that jumped over the moon. A lagging scientist—who was too lazy to join the whole clusterfuck and was consequently left behind, though not anymore—stares at them like the stunned man on the moon.

We’re reusing old poems now? Cool.

“Yo, mates,” Lily calls for the town members’ attention as she hops from her man’s—or bear’s, in this case—back as he slowly repeats the shifting process that turns him back into a human. “The foes are coming for ya. I don’t know what you should do, but if I were you, I’d pick hiding back in the bank vault or something as the safest bet. I’d even risk a felony and steal some cash from there.”

She leaves his fluffy pants by him. It might not be much, but it could shield his bare-assed form from prying eyes for basic decency’s sake.

The fairies fluttering around eye her curiously, probably remembering that time she slipped and landed on her ass right in town square. Like, what the heck is that awkward girl doing here? They flutter their wings, annoyed, but most stay with their feet firmly on the ground.

“We don’t have banks here,” Queeny calls after her, elegantly stepping down from Every’s back. And no, he isn’t done shifting yet.

“What do you mean?”Lily raises an eyebrow. All the while, she imagined Fairyland, the land of sweets itself, to have a much better quality of life than her desolate little small town.

“We don’t need much cash, as all food’s free anyway.”

Yeah, if all food in Darkindeep Ebonyngrey Wolfmane Ridge-Cliff small town were free, Lily wouldn’t be working five jobs for twenty-seven hours per day. “Makes sense, I guess.”

“Go hide in the pharmacy,” Queeny gives her population of worried fairies an idea. “Since it’s in the middle of town and all, away from the battle.”

It may be a Queeny-original idea, but it still is a better idea than Lily-girl’s.

This time, while fluttering their wings, the fairy population really flitters away, following the command of the only ruler they know. Poor Lily. They really look like butterflies now, but oversized ones, she decides as they flap their pretty wings and go away from her. She then remembers how she used to try catching them with a one-dollar net every time she went to the park as a small child, and guess what, these fairies also do have a net around them.

Well, technically, at least.

How coincidental.

But since the fairies have wings, they evacuate pretty quickly, unlike the pitiful Lily-girl back in her grade school years, when there was a fire drill that took over an hour to complete. She had forgotten her water bottle up on the classroom, and convinced that the fire was real, she begged the teachers to go up and save her bottle, ’cause her mama would kill her if it was gone. Of course the teachers yelled at her for even having such an absurd idea, but she still went anyway, and decided to just stay in the classroom. The heat from that summer, added to the fact that Darkindeep Ebonyngrey Wolfmane Ridge-Cliff small-town elementary school was, and still is, completely non-air-conditioned, coaxed her into believing that the fire was real. So she just curled up in there, ready to face death with her precious dollar store water bottle.

If there was a real fire on that old, fateful day, Lily wouldn’t be here today.

Just then, she hears the faint whispers of Fernando’s theme song, carried by the wind. Or perhaps the fact that they are actually nearing the town.

Shit.

At least her man Every has finally finished shapeshifting now and is standing in his good old wartime pink pants. He sure looks pretty here under the faint wintery sunlight, washboard abs shining as if he had just been transported from a coast. All he misses is a surfboard and a glass of pineapple punch.

“They’re away now?” He really threw common sense out of the window and into the neighbor’s lawn, saying that. Then he blinks like a lost puppy.