Chapter Text
As I rise to my feet and dust my knees off after exiting the crawlway, I see what is obviously some form of temple area. There are scenes of normal life painted on the walls, but the people have rotting flesh, skeletal hands, worms eating them, and so forth. Yet there are also depicted various religious symbols of Good alignment. There is a mosaic path leading between four rows of wooden pews that face the worship area. In front of the pews, a wooden railing divides the room. South of it is an altar in front of a tiered dais, on which sits a wooden chair.
Clanking and muffled grunts of exertion from behind me interrupt my observation of the room I find myself in, as my eternal annoyance Celestia Dawnforger drags herself out of the crawlway. How she fit in the crawlspace in the first place while wearing adamantine plate armor and with Sunset (her 10-foot-long Flame Tongue glaive) tucked under her arm is beyond me, but I’ve learned not to question such things during our travels. I lift my Goggles of Night off my eyes as she enters the room and speaks Sunset’s command word, causing it to burst into flames and illuminate the area, rendering the goggles redundant.
Celestia lets out a low whistle as she takes in the chapel, firelight flickering over the murals. “Wouldn’t have pegged Acererak as devout,” she says, “so I’m guessing this is probably another weird trap.”
“Wow, I guess you must not have dumped Intelligence after all,” I drawl. “Here I was thinking he held Sunday school in here every week.”
Celestia tilts her head, her long blonde hair cascading to one side as her warm brown eyes widen. Her hair and eye color combine to make the gesture very reminiscent of a golden retriever attempting to understand a Common command it hasn’t heard before. “Really? I thought you’d be more savvy than that, considering you’re our trap-finder,” she asks in an insultingly genuine tone. She then smirks, straightens out to her full six feet and two inches, and steps closer to me, making the half-foot of height she has over me all the more apparent. “Guess it’s a good thing you’re so pretty, Lark, if you don’t have much going on in here,” she says as she sticks her hand under the hood of my Cloak of the Bat and ruffles my black hair, causing several errant locks to spring free from my man bun.
“I was being facetious, obviously,” I growl at her as I slap her hand away with one of my own, all the while using the other to pull back my hood and attempt to straighten the errant hair so it at least frames my face nicely.
“So vain. It’s cute,” she adds, smirk widening as I use her armor—its adamantine surface polished to a mirror sheen—to examine my reflection.
“Shut up,” I mutter. “And don’t call me Lark. If you’re going to use my callsign, use the whole thing. Skylark. Or just call me by name.”
“No shot am I calling you Kirito Gravelstoke,” she snorts.
“Why not?! I call you by your dumb unicorn princess name!” I complain.
“Celestia is a perfectly reasonable name. My parents named me after Mount Celestia, that noble afterlife to which all those pure of heart aspire to earn entry with a lifetime of valor and service.”
“Well maybe I'm from, uh, Kozakura.”
“Nice try. Kozakura is from the Forgotten Realms, not the Nentir Vale. And besides, isn’t your backstory that your family is, like, old money Nerathi nobility from before the fall of the empire? Assassins in service to the crown? Not recent foreigners?”
Finding myself without a good response, I quickly deflect with a devastating verbal barb. “Like, what-ever,” I say, letting my voice trill upwards at the end of the sentence, mockingly imitating her inflection. “Nerd.”
“Quit flirting, losers,” comes a deadpan voice from behind us. We whirl around, both sputtering out protests at Jenever, our final party member.
“Hello? I’m gay?” Celestia exclaims, the kicked puppy look on her features doing nothing to diminish her golden retriever resemblance.
“As if I would go for a blonde bimbo like her,” I snarl, nearly simultaneously.
“Whoa, dude, chill on the misogyny,” our druid says. “Didn’t momma raise you better than that?”
“You know as well as I, sister, that Lenore did not raise us in any meaningful way,” I shoot back. “She merely turned us over to Xander, who trained us, honed us, turned us into perfect killing machines. The only lessons I was taught by the Gravelstoke family were recipes for poisons and assassination jutsu. While other children were out learning their letters or attending galas, I studied the blade.”
Celestia coughs. “Weeb.” She coughs again.
I glare at her, then turn my attention back to my sister, who’s draped in the Cloak of Elvenkind I stopped wearing when I found my Cloak of the Bat in the hoard of the adult black dragon Shadowmire (he was a nasty piece of work, a tyrant who held dominion over the Witchlight Fens until Celestia arranged a separation of his head from his shoulders courtesy of Sunset’s blade). Jen shares my long and straight black hair, dark eyes, and pale skin, but as the shortest of the three of us, she’s practically swimming in the borrowed cloak and my old nonmagical studded leather armor. A Belt of Hill Giant Strength Celestia no longer uses is doing its best to hold up the similarly oversized breeches she’s wearing, which were also borrowed from Celestia. The sight makes me snicker.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever, bro,” Jenever says. The appellation grates at me for some reason—probably because it comes off as so dismissive. “Let’s just keep moving. Check for traps, trap-checker,” she continues.
I roll my eyes, but turn back towards the wooden chair on the dais I had seen earlier and proceed deeper into the chapel, my eyes scanning the floor in front of me for pressure plates, pit traps, tripwires, or cryptic riddles hidden in the floor tiles.
The chair is nicely carved and padded but seems unremarkable. On either side of the dais are large, free-standing large brass candelabras each holding five white candles. In each corner on the southern wall is a large white pottery urn stoppered with a brass and wood plug. Sprawled on the floor near the west wall is human skeleton in black chain mail that is badly rusted and damaged. The skeleton’s outstretched arm points to a stone archway set in the wall. The opening is filled with opaque, bright orange vapors.
As I perform my visual examination, I hear Celestia inhale deeply behind me, and I know without even looking that she’s opening up her Divine Sense to see if it can provide any additional information. “Maybe you weren’t too far off about Acererak hosting Sunday school here,” she says. “This whole room is pinging as consecrated.”
What a puzzle! Could the demilich actually have been of Good alignment? I think to myself. Or I would, if I was as stupid as Celestia. No, it’s obviously some sort of red herring. Maybe Acererak spoofed the whole room to seem blessed using Nystul’s Magic Aura or something similar. The fucked up murals on the walls and dead dude on the floor wouldn’t exactly fill me with confidence about Acererak’s moral character, even if this dungeon wasn’t literally called the Tomb of Horrors and we hadn’t already fought through a bunch of stupid, deadly, and stupid deadly traps on the way here. When an infamous lich designs a false entrance to his tomb that traps your sister behind a sliding rock wall with no way to open it, I tend not to give him much benefit of the doubt. It’s a good thing Jen still had her Cape of the Mountebank when we started this dungeon delve and was able to Dimension Door out of there, otherwise I’d have lost the only member of my family I could even remotely tolerate before we even got into the tomb proper.
“No truly holy place would have another one of those in it,” Jen says, jerking her head towards the vapor-filled arch.
“What, scared?” I taunt. “Did you forget that the first arch got us out of the first room of the dungeon after I solved the puzzle with the glowing stones? You probably just fucked up the puzzle on the second arch. I bet if we went back and I took a proper crack at it, I could get it to take me somewhere cool.”
“Well, if you’re so much smarter than me, Kirito, you can be the one to go through this arch and end up naked in the dungeon’s entrance hall. Play with the stones all you like before you do—none of these ones are even glowing in the first place.”
I look at the archway, glancing at the two base stones and the keystone to confirm that Jen’s right. Unlike the previous two arches, there are no glowing colors here. I glance again at the skeleton on the floor, its outstretched arm pointing into the vapor-filled entrance, practically daring me to enter. I then check over my shoulder, seeing both Celestia and Jen staring at me, arms crossed, waiting for me to do something. I look back at the arch. I’m not some kind of sissy coward. This arch doesn’t scare me. But I’m also not dumb, no matter how many times Celestia says I am. I rummage through my Bag of Holding until I feel dry parchment crackling under my fingers, pulling out my sheaf of Spell Scrolls. I’m no wizard, but no self-respecting thief gets to my level of skill without knowing how to use a magic device or two. I flick through the scrolls until I find the one I’m looking for.
“Remind me your mom’s name?” I ask Celestia.
“What? Why?” she asks.
“I’m going to cast Commune, and I need to contact a deity or divine proxy. I’m not gonna call fucking Zehir, I’d probably piss him off. You’re an aasimar, right? Your mom is an angel? That seems trustworthy enough to me,” I respond.
“Dude, you can’t just call my mom and ask her to reveal the truths of the cosmos.”
“Why not?” I raise an eyebrow at her.
“I dunno, it’d be weird! She’d probably think we’re dating. I don’t usually introduce people to my mom unless it’s, like, serious,” Celestia says, flushing red.
“Doesn’t she know you’re gay? So she won’t make that mistake. It’ll be fine. Besides, we’re in an adventuring party together! That takes more commitment than most relationships!” I needle.
“I mean, that’s not the only reason! You’re, like, Chaotic Evil. You come from a long line of assassins. You literally worship the god of murder and poison and snakes. She’s gonna wonder why I even hang out with you,” Celestia complains.
I don’t understand why she’s making such a big deal of my deity. Don’t we have freedom of religion in this barony? Still, I know just what to say. “Just tell her you’re trying to redeem me! Paladins love redeeming evildoers. Especially rogues. I think.”
“Fine! Fine. Like, what-ever,” she says.
I smirk at how perfect my earlier mocking impression of her was.
“Commune with my mom. See if I care. But if she invites you to family dinner, you have to come and tell her you’re giving up on being a rogue and becoming a good little boy thanks to my guidance.”
Now it’s my turn to flush red. “Where the fuck did ‘good little boy’ come from? What the fuck?!”
Celestia seems to have gotten her swagger back, as she grins at me. “What, is it not accurate? You seemed to like it when I pet you earlier,” she says, reaching out to ruffle my hair again.
I scurry backwards and pull up my hood to dodge her. Which I succeed in doing, of course. I’m so good at dodging it’s uncanny. “What could have possibly given you that impression?!” I screech. “I hated it! You ruined my hair!”
“I dunno, Lark, you kind of leaned into my hand and looked really blissed out when I was doing it,” she taunts.
“No, I didn’t! You’re making things up! I control what I do and I definitely did not do that!” Though now that I think about it, having an attractive woman (even one as obnoxious as Celestia) run her hands through my hair probably would feel really good. Er, probably did feel really good, since it happened? I just hadn’t considered how it would feel at the time. Not that I’d ever give her the satisfaction of saying so.
“Sure, sure. Anyways, Abdiel is the name you’re looking for. Solar in service to Bahamut.”
I grumble a reluctant thanks as I begin lighting the appropriate incenses, anointing myself with holy water, tracing the holy symbol of Bahamut in the air with my fingers, and chanting the Verbal components written on the Spell Scroll. As I complete the spell, time seems to slow around me until it comes to a still—the flames of Sunset’s blade frozen mid-flicker, the vapors filling the archway as static as the stone the arch is made of, my two companions as still and breathless as the grave. Kind of eerie, to be honest, but I know it’s just a vision.
“Hail, daughter of the serpent. Thou hast spoken my name and invoked the symbol of my lord. Speak now thine questions three, assassin, and hear thee truth from divinity for the first time.”
I whirl at the melodic voice, its tone clearer than a church bell’s chime, and my gaze falls upon an absolutely shredded woman floating in midair. Six feathered wings sprout from her back—two from her shoulder blades, where I expected an angel’s wings to be, and two more pairs closer to her waist—one pair angled up, parallel to the shoulder wings, and another angled slightly down, such that the four waist wings form a vague X shape. She’s wearing a silvery toga made of what looks like fine mithral chainmail. It’s the kind of toga that only goes over one shoulder, so it only covers one of her breasts, but white fabric bandages bind both of them sarashi-style, preventing me from getting an angelic eyeful of her right nip. The toga’s coverage is low enough that part of her six pack is visible (making me wonder if it’s even effective as armor in the first place). Her arms are completely guns out, and I have to stop myself from gawking at her biceps. She’s lazily holding a glowing golden claymore in a single hand as if it was as light as one of her feathers. Her eyes are the color of silver—no, platinum—and glow with an intense, icy light. Her hair is the opposite of her eyes—as golden as her daughter’s, flickering and dancing like fire.
“Holy fuck. Is Celestia gonna be as hot as you some day?”
“My daughter is already angelic in her beauty. Thine first question has been answered. Two questions remain,” Abdiel says, arching a golden eyebrow. Oops. I didn’t mean for that to be one of my three questions. I doubtless look rather sheepish, and Abdiel’s gaze somehow seems more judgmental now than it did when she called me “daughter of the serpent.” Wait, what was up with that, anyways?
“Did you call me ‘daughter of the serpent?’ I’m a boy. I just have long hair and a Dex build,” I say.
“I did. My apologies. My daughter normally only introduces me to women of a particular variety, and I mistook thee as one of them due to thine adherence—outside of thine gender—to her preferred demographic. ‘Goth girlfriends,’ I believe she calls them. ‘I love the kind of woman that can kick my ass,’ she also says. A protégé of Xander Gravelstoke would qualify on both counts. Thine second question has been answered. One question remains.”
Oops again. At least I just struck gold for mocking Celestia. She’ll never live down her mom implying I could hypothetically kick her ass, or saying that she’d be into me if I was a girl. A weird feeling twists through my gut at that second thought—actually, I probably won’t bring that part up to her. It’s probably guilt at not respecting her lesbianism. No need to bring up the possibility of us dating, it would never work for obvious reasons. The ass-kicking part, though? I’m definitely rubbing that one in at some point.
“Uh, fuck. Last question. If I go through this arch,” I gesture at the arch before continuing, “will I get teleported buck-ass nude to the entry hall like Jen did with the other arch?”
“Not unless thou goest through repeatedly,” Abdiel says. “Also, thou shouldst never swear. It’s a sign of weak verbal skills.”
“Did you just quote the blue ninja at me?” I ask incredulously.
“I cannot answer that, as thine third question has already been answered and no questions remain. But thou shouldst feel free to Commune with me again on future days, shouldst thou acquire additional Spell Scrolls of the appropriate variety, and ask me then. It was a pleasure to meet thee, Kirito ‘Skylark’ Gravelstoke. Nobility exists within you, and nobility is the domain of my Lord. Thou must merely remember that true nobility comes from thine actions, not from the blood of fathers or the decree of kings. I wishest thou the best in following my daughter out of the shadows and into the light.”
With that last bit of condescending patronization, Abdiel vanishes in a burst of icy wind. “Your old-timey language kind of went in-and-out!” I call after her in an attempt to get the last word in. She doesn’t respond. My perception of time resumes.
“You didn’t tell me your mom was a MILF!” I exclaim as soon as the spell ends.
“Dude!” Celestia screeches.
Jenever chortles. “Tia’s mom has got it going on, huh?”
“Et tu, Jen?” Celestia asks, shooting my sister those big brown puppy dog eyes.
Jen steadfastly ignores her, entirely unfazed. The power of heterosexuality in action, I suppose. “Well, Kiri? Are you gonna go in the arch or bitch out?”
“Abdiel says the arch will do the naked thing, but only if I go through repeatedly. So I just need to get it right on the first try. And don’t call me ‘Kiri,’” I tell her.
“Get in the fucking archway, Kiri,” she says, ignoring my entirely reasonable request.
“Fine!” I shout, marching towards the arch. “And they call me a weeb,” I tack on under my breath. "At least my references come from the current century." When I get to the arch, I pause before entering the mist. I think back to the arch in the entry hall—the one I solved to let us move on. The correct sequence for that arch was yellow, then blue, then orange, which positionally was… left base stone, keystone, right base stone. I touch the base stones and keystone of this arch in the same pattern, deciding that it’s as good a guess as any in the absence of any visual cues. Then I stride confidently into the archway. A chill runs up my spine as I vanish into the vapors, momentarily losing all visibility. When my vision clears, I’m standing back in the chapel, facing Celestia and Jen, who are both gaping at me. It seems like all the arch did was rotate me 180 degrees? Then I look down at myself.
“What the fuck?!”
~~~
“What the fuck?!” I slam my hands on the makeshift table we’ve cobbled together by pushing multiple desks into the center of the classroom and stand up. The violent motion causes my dice to rattle in their tray. I glare at Brittany, who is smiling innocently at me over her DM screen. Tiffany, sitting directly across from me, is struggling to hold back laughter, holding her hand over her mouth. Madison, the traitor, is laughing openly from her seat to my right.
“I said what I said,” Brittany confirms. “When you step back out of the arch, you’ve been turned into a girl. Oh, and your alignment has inverted, too. So you’re Lawful Good now.”
“What kind of sick joke is this? You’re pushing your liberal, gay agenda on me! You can’t just turn me into a girl! I didn’t even get a saving throw!” I shriek.
Tiffany and Mads make eye contact and both smirk. Mads rolls her eyes, and Tiffany just shrugs.
Brittany, meanwhile, snorts out a burst of laughter. “Dude, the Tomb of Horrors was written in, like, the 70s by Gary ‘Damn Right I Am Sexist’ Gygax. Renowned author of the Random Harlot table. If anything, this trap was probably designed to facilitate transphobic jokes, not to promote the gay agenda.”
I grumble a few more curse words as I sink back into my uncomfortable plastic chair. I wish we had a better place to meet than our advisor’s classroom after school, but the other half of the D&D club gets to use the library study room since they were around first. At least our advisor, Ms. O’Shaughnessy, mostly supervises them and barely ever checks on us. “I trust you girls to behave yourselves,” she always says. I never bother correcting her and pointing out that I’m here too—it doesn’t really bother me that much, and I don’t want to rock the boat.
Meanwhile, Tiffany lights up. “There’s a Random Harlot table?!” she asks. Her eyes are practically sparkling—they’re the same brown as her character’s, and her hair is the same blonde. She just self-inserted and made herself taller and buffer, like the noob she is. I would never do that. Sure, Kirito is pale and has long black hair like me, but that’s just because he (she?) is based on an anime character. Kirito has black eyes and l have blue eyes, so I’m not self-inserting at all. And anime characters are technically Asian, I think, even if they’re pale. Even if Kirito is descended from Nerathi nobility, like Tiffany pointed out earlier, maybe the Gravelstoke family is, like… ethnically Asian. Or fantasy Asian. Whatever.
“I mean, not in 5e or 4e, obviously. This was in one of the really old DMGs. It sort of became a meme online,” Brittany explains. I have no idea how cheerleaders like her and Tiffany ended up being such fucking nerds. I’m pretty sure they explained it when they first asked to join the D&D club, but I wasn’t paying attention at the time.
“Can we roll on the Harlot table to see what girl-Kirito looks like?” asks Mads, giving me a shit-eating grin.
“I am NOT a harlot! Who’s a misogynist now, Madison?” I sneer.
“Ooh, do you have big tits now?!” Tiffany asks, ignoring my protests.
“No!” I shout. “My ability scores are all the same! I’m still a level 14 rogue and the deadliest scion of the Gravelstoke family!”
“Second deadliest,” Mads interjects.
“Shut up, I’m way deadlier than you!” I snap back.
“Says the martial to the full caster,” Mads scoffs.
“Anyways, I have a plus fifteen to Stealth and a plus eleven to Athletics! I’m like, lithe and toned. So my breasts—not tits—would be, like, on the smaller side. Proportionate, or whatever,” I huff. “Besides, I’ve been using a screenshot from Gun Gale for my character art this whole time anyways. I probably look basically the same as I did before.” I’ve always liked that version of Kirito (anime Kirito, not my character) best for some reason. Probably because it’s less generic than his first look, and he doesn’t have the stupid haircut from his Alfheim look. Plus, long hair is punk and edgy—that’s why I’ve been growing mine out for so long.
“Oooh, lithe and toned!” Tiffany snickers. “Hawt.”
“Shut up! Stop making fun of me!” I whine.
“This is karma for you deciding to Commune with my mom,” she says in a sing-song voice.
“I’ll Commune with your mom in real life if you don’t quit it!”
“I’ll Commune with yours,” Tiffany says, while making a very lewd gesture involving her tongue and two of her fingers making a “V” shape.
“Please don’t,” Mads drawls, completely deadpan. “That’s my mom, too.”
I turn back to Brittany, deciding to be the bigger person and let Tiffany’s childishness go. “I want to go back into the arch,” I say.
“Whoa, I grab her by the shoulder and stop her,” Tiffany says. “Then I spin her around so she’s facing me, and I ask her: ‘Lark, babe, did you forget what my mom said? It’ll do the naked thing to you if you go through repeatedly.’”
A strange feeling (presumably hatred) runs through me when I clock the pronoun Tiffany used. I turn bright red (with anger, of course). “Don’t call me ‘babe,’ what the fuck?! And don’t call me ‘her’, either!”
“Was that in-character or out-of-character? Because I only called you ‘her’ in narration, so in-character, Lark hasn’t heard Celestia gender her yet,” Tiffany says.
“I don’t know! Both! Just quit it!” I say. "I throw Celestia's hand off my shoulder and tell her, 'Repeatedly could mean a lot of things! We don't know if just twice is enough to be repeatedly!'"
"I reach out, grab one of the locks of hair that came free from Lark's bun earlier, and play with it. I give her a dazzling smile and say, 'If you're that eager to end up naked as a girl, I could always help you with that—without risking all of your magic items disappearing.' Then I wink at her." Tiffany winks at me in real life as she narrates Celestia's action.
"Gross," Mads says, making a face.
"Tiffany, what the fuck?!" I sputter.
"You remember what my mom said," Tiffany says, shrugging. "Girl Lark is exactly my type."
"You didn't hear your mom say that," I say snidely. "Only I heard Abdiel speak. You would only know the parts I passed on."
“Hey, Corbin—real talk,” interjects Brittany, shutting down both the argument and the eminently weird moment. “You seem more on edge than usual. Is this, like, triggering for you or something? Do you want to go back and X-card it? I know you’ve never used it, but it’s there for you.” She gestures at an index card resting on one of the desks we’ve pushed together, which has a big red “X” drawn on it in Sharpie.
“I’m not triggered,” I scoff. “I’m not some liberal snowflake like the rest of you. I told you on day one that the X-card thing is hella gay. I triggered a trap, whatever. I’ll deal with the consequences like a real man. I'm not about to whine and beg for a retcon.”
“That’s the right attitude!” cheers Tiffany. “Man up and be a girl. A Lawful Good girl, at that.” She snickers, and I feel my ears and cheeks growing hot.
“Yes, fine, I’m a girl now!” I concede. “‘Her’ is fine, if you must. But stop laughing so much about it. And being weird about it. And still no ‘babe.’”
“But you’re so lithe and toned and proportionate,” Tiffany coos.
“I said to stop making it weird!” I shriek. Tiffany, Brittany, and Mads all laugh.
“I’m sure the jokes will dry up pretty soon, Corbin,” Brittany says. “The novelty will wear off fast. Guys play girl characters and vice versa all the time. It's no big deal. Anyways, we’re pretty much out of time for today. Let’s put Ms. O’s classroom back together and get out of here.”
As we drag the desks back to their original positions, I note—not for the first time—how much easier the physical activity seems to be for the two cheerleaders than it is for me. I promise myself—also not for the first time—that I’ll start working out. I don’t want to be some musclebound brute like the guys on the football team, but constantly being reminded that Tiffany is stronger than me is making me feel weird things. Emasculation and jealousy, probably.
Mads, as usual, does not help. She just stands off to the side, texting, probably telling our parents that we’ll be home soon.
“Alright, good session, y’all!” Brittany says as we finish up with the tables. “I’m off to the library to give Ms. O her key back. See you at practice, Tiff, and I’ll catch you in class, Corbin.”
I give Brittany the man nod and grunt to acknowledge her farewell.
Madison rolls her eyes at me. “Very macho, sis. Trying to reclaim what you lost?”
Tiffany giggles. I silently fume out of principle, but weirdly, this feels less bad than when she called me “bro” in-character earlier. Maybe because this “sis” is obviously lighthearted teasing, not condescension?
“See you girls next week!” Mads says to Tiffany and Brittany, in a much more cheerful tone than when she addressed me. Rude.
“Bye, Mads! Don’t be afraid to say ‘hi’ if you see me in the halls!” Brittany tells her. “All your friends will be jealous that you know a senior cheerleader.”
“I think being in D&D club and having this dweeb for a sibling cancels out any cool points that might give me,” Mads jokes, jerking a thumb in my direction.
I fume a little more genuinely. “If I’m too much of a dweeb to associate with, would you prefer to walk home?” I ask.
“As a newly minted paragon of Law and Good, you would surely not leave your helpless sister without a ride?” Madison asks, trying to give me puppy dog eyes. Joke’s on her, though, I’ve seen Tiffany’s puppy dog eyes and hers are nothing in comparison. I’m pretty much immunized from anyone using them on me in the future, ever.
“Yeah, come on, Lark! Be a good girl and play nice with your little sister,” Tiffany says.
“Fine, fine, whatever,” I concede. “Come on, let’s swing through a drive through on the way home.”
“Wow, so you just immediately caved when she called you a good girl, huh?” Mads asks. Tiffany grins.
“What?! No. I just want to get out of here so all of you stop making fun of me! What do you want? Chik-fil-A?”
Mads wrinkles her nose. “Aren’t they, like, homophobic?”
“Do I look like I care?” I shoot back.
“A Lawful Good girl wouldn’t support homophobia, would she?” asks Tiffany. She’s pouting, doing the puppy dog eyes, and holding her pink JanSport backpack in front of her like Puss in Boots holds his hat in Shrek, proudly displaying the orange-, pink-, and white-striped pin stuck to it. Fuck.
“We’ll go to Popeyes,” I grumble. God, why did I even join this stupid table to begin with?