A Bet To Lose, Chapter 6 free porn video

Richard woke up his computer seconds after he woke up himself. He fired up Jailtracker for his local area, fully expecting not to find anything, and there was Leslie's biological mother's name. His jaw opened a bit, and his breathing grew rapid. He clicked it and blinked, staring at the screen, looking at the magic words appear before him: POSS W/ INTENT DISTRIB HEROIN. Richard knew, from personal experience, that you stop getting a say in your children's lives when you get busted for things like POSS W/ INTENT DISTRIB HEROIN. "It actually worked," he whispered. He looked down, and then up again, in disbelief. He had actually pulled it off. Relief, euphoria, and elation washed through him, along with a strange sense of dissociation, not quite the same as he'd felt when he first started doing this. Dazed, halfway in a dream, he posted the Jailtracker link in the Discord chat and told them how to sort by new, not expecting anyone to be awake. [6:10 AM] Leslie: This is what you were working on? :astonished: [6:12 AM] Leslie: How the f u c k did you do it?! :open_mouth: [6:12 AM] Richard: Dark sorcery, how else? [6:13 AM] Leslie: Funny but I'm not kidding. I have to show my parents this. BRB Richard winced, but he understood. If the worst thing that came out of this was that he'd have to face the music, it would surely be better than the funeral dirge Leslie would have faced without it. [6:15 AM] Caroline: HOW THE FUCK DID YOU FRAME HER BIO PARENTS FOR DRUGS Parents, plural? Oh, the other one had just appeared as well, along with someone else, probably the mule. Similar list of charges, beginning with the magic words CONSPIRACY DISTRIB HEROIN. (He noted that the police had probably gotten the charges of husband and wife flipped but didn't care.) [6:17 AM] Richard: LOL I didn't frame them. Don't think you can get busted for POSS W/ INTENT DISTRIB without actually having drugs. I didn't plant or give them anything either lol [6:18 AM] Caroline: ok then how the fuck did you catch them [6:20 AM] Richard: I **really** don't want to explain that here! Zoe needed to know, so he threw on his boxer shorts and tapped on her door quietly as their mother was still asleep. Receiving no reply, he decided to call her on the phone instead. She opened the door half a minute later, wearing pajamas, her hair a mess, her phone in her hand. She'd known why he'd called her but couldn't believe it. "Ricky, is this a prank?" "I can't prank Jailtracker," he quietly pointed out. "This is real, Zoe. It's over." He was very, very glad it was over. His next steps would have gotten him even more involved than he already was. Bereft of words, she hugged him, still holding on to her phone. [6:23 AM] Leslie: This is Leslie's mother. Richard, Leslie's father and I would like to speak with you privately, in person. Can you get your mother to drive you here before we have to be at work at 9? [6:24 AM] Richard: Ok. Getting their mother out of bed took less effort than Richard had expected and more effort than Zoe had. They'd needed to show her the specific line in the chat room before she was convinced that this is a thing she actually needed to do, asking her if she wanted to call Leslie's parents on the phone, even after they'd promised her the answers she so sorely wanted. She wondered if she'd get the answer she really wanted: why and how had her children changed so much? The chat had moved forward: [6:26 AM] Caroline: sorry maam but were all invovled. we cant let him do this alone. just called susie [6:28 AM] Leslie: Mom here. I understand. [6:31 AM] Susie: She's picking me up. Will be there in 45 minutes or so. [6:31 AM] Susie: HOLY SHIT btw. [6:32 AM] Zoe: We're coming. Also what Susie said! They were in the fairly old car within half an hour, mostly forgoing morning rituals except for excretions and tooth brushing, as Richard decided to transfer some screenshots to his phone, Zoe stared at her brother with a mixture of shock and outright awe, and Heather thought of the last time her children had woken her up so early. Christmas? No, certainly not last Christmas, and not the one before. Richard wondered if Caroline should have picked them up instead, but Leslie's father had specifically requested for Heather to be there, and Richard figured that maybe explaining what he'd done in front of her would give his mother a much-needed hint. They arrived at a fortituous time, Heather arriving just as Caroline and Susie were walking in, and the full group met in the living room together. Leslie hadn't been kidding; the house really was full of assistive devices, some of which Richard and Zoe had never seen before. Leslie sat on a very comfortable-looking chair, her parents on the couch, Heather on another chair and the teens on the floor. They introduced themselves quickly, and Richard took note of Leslie's parents; they looked nothing like her. Willa had a harsh, lined face bereft of makeup, and her husband, Robert, looked almost like a version of Richard that had grown up, only with a neatly trimmed beard and glasses. He looks like Gordon Freeman, Richard realized, and would have laughed if he thought anyone else there would have had any idea what he was talking about. Unlike the Half-Life protagonist, though, Robert had a voice, a deep, educated one that sounded like a guidance counselor. "If anything, and I mean anything, we say in here leaves this room, it's going to get very ugly for everyone in here. Especially Leslie. Do we all understand this?" The one person that Richard and Zoe worried about not understanding that was their mother, but Heather had worked a union job for longer than her children had been alive and was very, very good at knowing when to keep her mouth shut. "Richard, I want you to explain, step by step, what you did, and I don't want anyone interrupting or distracting him." He spoke with serious authority, Richard noted, like a principal or warden. It was a skill the man had spent time cultivating. There were things that Richard had decided to leave out. The first was who, or rather what, had taught him to do this. The thing on his friends list had told him exactly what investigative procedure to use: search everything you can find, then use that to look into more things to find, and never stop doing that, not even when you think you've found something good. Think of what they would least like to be discovered about themselves, and then discover that. Dig into every rabbit hole. Analyze every piece of information. Consider the future state of things every step of the way. (Richard, a veteran Starcraft 2 player, did not need to be told that one.) Do not give up until you can no longer physically continue. Richard would also not mention his missteps and false leads. He had made a hell of a lot of mistakes and crawled down a lot of blind alleys, including spending two hours tracking down an account that turned out to be owned by somebody else. If he had really known what he was doing, he figured, he would have had it done in maybe an hour and a half and probably would have felt a hell of a lot less emotion in the process. As it was, he'd actually spent an hour in total looking general information up simply because he was thirteen years old and had no idea what certain things meant. He also had no intention of discussing what he had felt while he was doing it. It wasn't relevant, it sounded really stupid when he said it out loud, and his princess had specifically ordered him not to be emo. The final thing he would not mention, not even to himself, was that he hadn't entirely done it for Leslie. He'd done it because he saw monsters, and monsters needed to be destroyed. He took a breath. "Okay, I was actually just originally going to look up things to show your lawyer for the hearing. So, the first thing I did was I looked on their Facebook stuff, and on some of their older posts, they'd shown a bunch of screenshots." He showed Leslie's parents his screenshots as he talked. "One of them had her bio dad's computer username, and that username was also his Reddit account, which had posted a bunch of drug related stuff a few years ago. But I really wanted to look at his private messages, and his password was the third one I tried: p, 4, s, s, w, 0, r, d." Heather looked like she wanted to interrupt but kept quiet. "On there, he was talking to this one guy who said that he used a forum all about drugs. I found his account on there, and you're not even gonna believe what his password was. It was leslie, no caps." That was about the tenth one he'd tried, and he was utterly shocked and disgusted when it had actually worked. "I get on there, and he's talking to somebody else about a drug market on TOR, the dark web. I found his account on that site, same password, and he'd actually set up regular transactions with their escrow people. That's why we had to wait until Friday, because the next one was scheduled to be picked up at the Mission parking lot at 4 AM this morning. I called the cops and told them I overheard a couple of guys talking about transferring drugs there. As soon as I said Mission I knew they believed me." The 'Mission' had failed miserably; it referred to the name of an entirely local, heavily understaffed, and notoriously mismanaged homeless shelter, halfway house, and home of a wide variety of registered sex offenders. "You said you overheard it," Robert said. "What else was I going to tell them?!" Richard replied. "You could have used some crimestopper tipline, but don't worry about it. They probably knew you were lying about how you got the info, but big secret, they don't care around here as long as the info's good." Richard nodded, having thought the same thing. "Did you give them your name?" "I did, just to make sure they'd actually send someone, but I asked them to keep me anonymous." "All right, it probably won't be a problem. At least I don't think so. Willa?" "If we all keep our mouths shut about this, yes," she replied in exactly the voice Richard and Zoe had expected. "Even if they were told that someone overheard, if they admit to using a computer network to traffic drugs, they could be facing federal instead of state charges. They're going to just plead guilty, 99 times out of 100." "I wish I understood more about computers," Heather lamented. Not for the first time, she could simply not entirely comprehend what her son was talking about. "Here's the short version: Your boy's a freaking Jedi," Caroline said, sharing a knowing look with the rest of the teens. What Richard had done in his room that day had not involved the light side of the Force. "The other short version is that we owe him a lot," Robert said. "You don't understand what he did for us. When you have a biological parent opposing an experimental therapy, it is almost impossible to get a judge to not issue a stay on something like that. They could have dragged this out for months and months." Caroline just nodded as the looks went her way; she'd called it. "What she has and how she has it, it's a progressive disease. I don't even know if this therapy is going to work, but I do know she'd just get worse without it." Heather shook her head. "I don't understand that either. If this is supposed to save her life, why would her parents oppose it?" Willa chuckled without humor. "That's basically asking us why we have jobs." Heather shook her head again. "I just couldn't imagine a parent doing something so hurtful." There was more chuckling in the room, and she had a vague idea as to why. Robert held up a hand. "Anyway, I need to be clear about something. All of what we just talked about would be true if Richard had been the one who did this. Instead, what happened was, I told you to give that story to the police, and I was the one who did all of this." A moment while that sunk in. Willa drew in a breath. "Phone," he told Richard in a clinical tone, one professional to another, and Richard immediately gave it to him. Robert was absolutely embarrassed at himself and decided that, if he could do nothing else, he could at least do this, even though nothing was likely to come of it. He could have done everything Richard had done, and probably done some of it better, if he'd really tried. "You're tanking for him," Heather realized. She had played World of Warcraft while Zoe and Richard were babies. "Don't know what that means," Robert replied. "She means you're eating the damage," Zoe answered. "That I am. Honestly, I concur with Willa in that I don't actually expect anything to happen over this, this was a minor giving a tip for a future event and they got caught red handed, but I'm not going to let there be even a chance of a thirteen-year-old going down over saving my daughter's life and putting away a couple of scumbags in the process. There, now the screenshots of everything I did are on my computer, and your phone has nothing related," he said, handing it back to him. "Make sure nothing at home does. Did you save to a cloud service at all?" Richard raised an eyebrow at him. The guy had shown him professional courtesy and then he asked him that? "Hell no." "Good, well, we almost certainly won't ever hear about any of this again. And Heather, there's something else Willa and I should probably talk to you about. It's unrelated. In private, please." They led her past a couple of assistive devices into their bedroom and closed the door. "What do you think that's about?" Susie asked, worried. "Probably about the dresses," Leslie said. Richard's eyes bugged out. "What?!" he blurted out quietly. Caroline laughed. "She didn't mean your dresses, they don't know about that, at least I hope they don't." Leslie looked away for a bit, but no one noticed. "She meant that shit that your mom pulled on you, Zoe. Leslie's parents are not gonna let that slide while they've got her in here. Now c'mon, we have messages to delete. Pretty sure deleted actually means deleted here." Many of the previous conversations they'd had were unhappened in minutes. "Also... they're not going to tell her..." Leslie's lip curled up a bit. "...but I told them everything. Everything. They're my parents, it's different between me and them than for any of you." Susie inhaled a bit. Caroline whistled faintly. "Dealing with abused kids is literally their full-time job." It was how they'd met, and they'd decided to adopt a child in need of serious help themselves shortly after they'd married. That child happened to be an, at the time, eleven-year-old girl with truly abominable parents and a serious progressive disease. "Ricky, they don't care about that stuff as long as it's up to you. Even before this." It was a breach of trust, but it was forgivable. Given what was going on in the other room - Richard overheard Willa nearly losing her temper with "can last for decades" - he was sure that they were on his and Zoe's side. Zoe looked at Leslie. "About us?" Not for the first time, Richard had to remind himself that the preteen-looking Leslie was actually older than his sister. "They said it's fine, that it's even good for me, as long as it's an equal relationship." She looked down at her broken body, as if to suggest that she could never have one while she was like that. "Leslie, if they start talking to my dad..." Susie winced and moved her hands back and forth in a highly negative gesture. Ricky also winced a bit; after all this, there weren't many things that could scare him anymore, but despite his abilities, he had a pretty solid idea that Susie's dad was not a man with whom he wanted to fuck. "They won't. Trust me, they won't. They have to worry about stuff like this all the time. That's why it was safe to tell them." Robert and Willa could not even count the number of times that a child had admitted something personal to his or her parents and received extremely vicious abuse in return. The adults left the bedroom then, and it was immediately evident that Heather had been crying. Zoe and Richard both knew what that meant, and Richard gave a small sigh of relief, thinking of all the things that he wouldn't have to do, at least not then, including calling his Sith master to go full Palpatine on his own family. None of the teens had any idea what Leslie's parents had said to her nor exactly how they'd said it, but whatever it was, it had worked. Heather offered a very awkward and too-long apology that involved her tripping over her words and repeating herself more than once, saying that she was sorry for not believing her daughter, putting her into dresses she hated, and not seeing the signs that Zoe's cousins were giving off, and that whoever Zoe chose to be, Heather had to, as her mother, accept that choice. Richard had expected her to apologize when they got into the car; for her to do it right then meant that she was completely defeated. Zoe was still not willing to tell her mother the full truth, and Richard never even considered it. Zoe's reply was very simple: "If you never do anything like that again, for any reason, we can forget about this." It was a lie, of course; she would not forget about it for a very long time, if ever (as Robert and Willa had just been explaining), but the alternative to pretending was to live in simmering antagonism with her mother until she moved out. Heather readily agreed. Robert offered to buy breakfast at a local diner for all of them, an offer that was immediately accepted. Treating Richard, his family, and his friends to a nice breakfast was the very least he could have done. Repay him? How? With what? He didn't even know how to thank him. Richard and Zoe rode with their mother, who was obviously deep in thought. Heather knew the WoW analogy wasn't quite right but kept drifting back to it: Her children had become higher level than she was. She was in the mid-levels, hunting monsters and gathering herbs, and apparently her children had been powerleveling while she was gone, and now her son had joined the same guild as his sister and friends, kitting himself out with endgame loot after having defeated a raid boss. She thanked her intuition for telling her what she needed to hear yesterday -- her son had just singlehandedly sent two people to jail with nothing but his computer and his determination, and she'd almost been insane enough to seriously piss him off! Both Robert and Willa had been very clear with her: As their mother, it was her duty to keep them safe and help them grow, and whoever or whatever they were was not something that she could force into one identity or another. She took this advice very much to heart. She did, however, allow herself one point of pride: if her son could do that, it meant that she had, in some way, succeeded in parenting him. The diner had recently reopened, and obviously the same people were working there; the staff recognized Leslie's family on sight and immediately found a table that would accomodate all eight of them, including Leslie's wheelchair. As before, Richard's friends simply didn't treat him any differently than they had the last time they'd eaten together. It never crossed their minds that they should. Richard developed a new metric for judging people: 'How much would this person treat me differently if I were in a dress?' In fact, they were all regularly stealing looks at him - even the adults were doing that, and for reasons that had nothing to do with how sweet he liked to look. He understood, very thoroughly, that some statuses were more critical than others, that real life really did resemble many of his games. In the greater scheme of things, his pretty dresses were almost entirely cosmetics; his stats were what counted, and apparently those were enough to complete a very critical quest. He was not merely Richard, the boy who liked to look cute and girly; he was Richard, the Sith apprentice who liked to look cute and girly. "Hey, Ricky, there's somewhere I want to take you today," Susie told him. She'd been using her phone at the table, and he'd caught a glimpse of a map. "Yeah, Mom, I think we're going to spend the day with them," Zoe added. "Go on ahead," Heather replied. What else was she going to say? She'd taken off Friday so that she could spend time with her children, get them to see things her way, but that had been pulverized before it even started. Robert tipped well, and no one but Richard noticed when Susie slipped a twenty under her plate for the waitress to pick up. Caroline chuckled as they got in the car together, shaking her head. "Your mom. From hyena to pussycat. I bet she thought you were going to do her next." She had meant it as a joke and was surprised to get general agreement. "She thought I was going to do her next yesterday, and she didn't even know what it was," Richard said, and abruptly decided that the best definition of it was 'do dirty'. "She'd said some real ugly shit." Did the woman not get that forcing people into dresses just wasn't something you did, especially to your own children? Was this hard somehow? He didn't want to do his own mother dirty, didn't even really want to intimidate her, and really, really hoped that what she'd learned today in addition to Leslie's parents telling her off would put a stop to stupid parent tricks forever, even if she found out things the Squad didn't want her to know. "No, we're not talking about this now," Zoe said. It was killing the mood. "We can talk about where we're going." "No we can't," Susie replied. "It'll be a pleasant surprise for at least one of us. Assuming it's open." "We can talk about what Ricky did," Leslie offered. She understood, mechanically, what had happened. She did not understand why Richard had delved deep into all-consuming hatred and monomaniacal fixation to do it. Wasn't it her problem? She'd only known him for a few days! She knew that this was the kind of 'low self-esteem' thing that her parents talked to her about fairly often, but she had a difficult time understanding that people cared about her. Was he the same sort of rarity as the rest of her friends and her parents? She had to remind herself that her parents were telling the truth, that this was just the sort of thing real friends did for each other. "Heroic," Susie said, simply. "Is there a better word?" She intended to reward him for it, reward him in a way that the both of them would very much enjoy. Today's trip was something she was probably going to do anyway, but she had even more exciting plans in mind for later. "Isn't that what's supposed to happen with a princess around?" Richard joked. The girls giggled and he realized his mistake: he'd never called her that before in front of the rest of them. Susie didn't seem to mind, though, as she was giggling as well, although she added yet another item to her to-do list for when they were alone. "It was the best timing, but not the worst revenge I ever heard of," Caroline said, looking behind her as she merged onto the highway to downtown. Traffic was much lighter than it was before everyone who could had started working from home. "I heard this like five years ago, it's a rumor, but I think it actually happened. There were these mean girls, and this nerd, and she didn't have any other friends so she kept hanging out with them even when they made her help bully other people, and then she was arguing over something, and one of the mean girls cut her bra strap in school, and then she waited for years and then... it was her boyfriend, husband, I forget, but she hooked him up with a drug dealer, something really addictive, meth or coke or something. Totally fucked them." Leslie whistled. Susie's lips pursed. "Ouch," Zoe said. "That is hardcore," Richard added. He felt a great deal of respect for whoever pulled that off and wanted to meet to swap notes. "Hey, Ricky, lean your seat back," Susie said, and he found the lever that would let him do that, putting his head near his girlfriend's lap. "Not entirely safe, what are you doing?" Coraline asked. "Braiding his hair," Susie replied. "Don't worry, it'll be okay for where we're going." Caroline's car had good suspension, and he smiled as she put his hair back into its familiar, comfortable pigtails. She kissed him on the forehead when she was done, and he sat back up happily, not caring one whit if anyone saw him. They chatted the rest of the way, about Leslie's treatment (which Leslie had to remind herself was actually, for-sure, going to happen now), about everything else they'd been doing, about the food they'd eaten. The agreement was that the bacon and eggs had been good; the milkshakes had been excellent. They arrived at their destination, a place close to the upscale part of the downtown area, and Caroline had to check her phone to make sure that it was the right place, frowning. "This is the address," she said, unconvinced. It wasn't a bad neighborhood, but weren't they going to a boutique? Where was the glass storefront, the displayed clothes? Why would a 'boutique' be a plain brick building with a single, forbidding-looking door? Okay, it did say "Spectral Boutique" on the small glass window, in rainbow cursive, but other than that, it looked almost like a crime den. She decided to go in first, and as they entered, Leslie walking, the group was startled by the sheer colorful flamboyance of two things. The first was the proprietor. He had the certain look of the guy who owns the place, and he also had a massively overdone, glittery, pastel rainbow concoction of a suit festooned with an abundance of buttons and pins, a Mad Hatter-style top hat, and sparkling rimmed glasses with no lenses. Not his fashion choices but his overall demeanor marked him as unquestionably, undeniably gay, leaving them all to wonder how much was of it was an act. Susie, who knew more about these things than a fifteen-year-old probably should, strongly suspected that the man had additional items on underneath. The second was everything else in the store. If the store had a theme, it was 'rainbows', with 'pastels' and 'fishnets' vying for second place. There was a section in the back labeled "Must Be 18 To Enter", which Susie found relieving because she'd worried that maybe the whole store was like that. "Okay, I'm seeing four girls, three underage, and one underage boy in pigtails," the proprietor said in exactly the sort of super-gay, lisping voice they were envisioning. (Caroline smirked but did not correct him.) "Before we even start, I have to ask, are you coercing, punishing, blackmailing, or threatening him in any way to be here?" All five of them burst out in spasms of uncontrollable laughter, Leslie needing to hold on to Zoe for support. "Coerce HIM?!" Caroline exclaimed, pointing. "Oh my God, he'd kill us all, there would be a giant smoking crater. You have no idea, we can't even tell you what he's capable of. Why would you even ask that?!" The man's voice became several notches less campy. "Three months after I opened, there was a boy, middle school age or so, and his face had been made up really garish, and his hair in super tight curlers, and he had so obviously been crying heavily. And his mother, could have been his aunt, and two sisters, cousins, whatever, were telling me to pull down the most ridiculous sissy stuff I have in the store to punish him with, and he's just standing there sobbing. Not sure if you noticed, but I have some pretty ridiculous stuff in here." Richard held his tongue; it would be mean to point out that the most ridiculous thing in the store was its owner. "What happened?" Leslie asked. The man raised an eyebrow. "What do you think happened? I told them to get the hell out of my store before I called Child Protective Services! And then I followed them out to their car, got their license plate, and called CPS on them anyway before they did something else to him. Never found out what happened after that, but from the conversation I had, it wouldn't surprise me if the kid got put in a home somewhere and the adult got sent to county for child abuse. To hell with assholes like that, our community doesn't need more crap coming down on it and I sure as hell don't. Anyway, that was a couple years ago." Richard considered asking for more details, just so he could make sure that family was well and truly destroyed, but there was no way this guy remembered what he'd need to know. The man turned the camp back on. "Welcome to the Spectral Boutique, my name is Franklin, what can I get you?" "I actually want to see your ridiculous stuff, just to see what it looks like," Susie said, and he pointed to the wall behind her. She turned and looked, as did the others. A long line of extremely, comically frilly, mostly babyish, and nearly all pink dresses hung on that wall, answering the question of why there were no windows. If anyone could just look through and see this stuff, somebody would target the place for sure. A lot of it had price tags that made even her suck air between her teeth, which wasn't surprising for things that shouldn't have existed outside a drawing or cartoon. Each one of them must have come in multiple layers; how else would you wash a thing like that? All of the teens were awed at seeing something like that in person. It was like something from a movie. "Wow. Holy... wow. That's not what we're here for, though. What we're looking for is that rainbow dress you've got, the one that goes from red to violet." "Yes! The Spectral Dress. Our flagship product, this is for him, right?" She nodded. "Okay, his size is right here," he said with the authority of someone very experienced at telling sizes at a glance. The dress he pulled out made a very smooth transition through all the colors of the rainbow, from red at the collar to a deep violet at the hem, which was slightly elastic in nature and retained a circular shape on its own. "Pockets are here and here, and the hoop part down here actually comes out, makes it easier to wash," he explained. "Nice!" Richard exclaimed, smiling from ear to ear. "If you're going to get it, I recommend the Spectral Gloves, at least one pair of Spectral Boots, and Spectral Socks. We've got them all in your size." The Spectral Gloves were soft, satiny, elbow-length opera gloves that didn't go through the full spectrum; instead, they matched the colors on the dress where his hands would be at his sides. The Spectral Boots were knee-length suede, going from violet to red, and coming in three heel heights: flats, two and a half-inch wedges, and five-inch wedges that he was both nervous about and thrilled to try. The socks were exactly the same length and color as the boots. "Buy the whole set and I'll throw in the Spectral Pants, the Spectral Shirt," These items were normal for boys except that they followed the same color pattern as the dress. "and a set of Spectral Hairbands." He held up a ten-pack of elastic hairbands that looped around the RGB color spectrum. "Ricky?" Susie asked, and he eagerly agreed. "We're buying all of this. Do you have a fitting room so he can wear some of it home?" "We certainly do, it's right over there." The two of them held hands into the fitting room, Susie selecting the dress, gloves, and medium heels for him, and she pulled out a makeup kit and a spare, folded diaper from her purse. Less than five minutes later, the two of them emerged, with Richard wearing his new Spectral outfit, his new rainbow hairbands holding his pigtails, subtly cute makeup, and a gigantic smile, his ordinary clothes in his arms. "You're pretty good on heels," Franklin noted with a smile. Richard was exactly the sort of kid he'd envisioned wearing that outfit when he'd made it. Most of his customers were adult men, with adult females in second place followed by curious teenage girls, but it was definitely an outfit for boys like him. "I've been practicing," Richard admitted. "I kinda always want to wear them, unless I'm doing something physical where I really shouldn't." "Just make sure you lift your toes and stretch your calves regularly," Franklin advised. "The shortened tendons thing can happen for real, especially since you're still growing. All right, you got the whole set, and there's tax, you know, let's just call it two-thirty even." Caroline whistled faintly, but Susie plopped down a dozen twenties like it was nothing and received a picture of Alexander Hamilton in return. "By the way," Susie said, "since you know a lot about this stuff, can you confirm a rumor for me? I heard that some babysitter tried to put somebody's ten-year-old kid into some bondage dress thing and his twin sister almost blew her head off for it." Franklin sucked in a long breath and dialed the camp down to zero. "You know, that actually might explain something. There's kind of a fetish, swinger group around here, the Greater Area Sissies," Susie abruptly recognized the acronym. "and they had a maaaajor falling out. I heard from one sissy who came in here, like half their members left, some won't even talk to each other anymore. I asked, but she just flat refused to say why. I might not ever know for sure, and that rumor sounds like bullcrap, but if it's true, it would explain a lot. By the way, can you not spread this? If this is true and gets confirmed to the general public, the feces is going to hit the rotary oscillator so hard it'll get on both me and him," he said, gesturing to Richard, and the group nodded in understanding. "Keep the change," Susie told him, pushing the Hamilton back towards him. "Knowing that was worth it." The campy voice returned. "Well, thank you very much, and please come back in the fall for our warmer stuff. You kids have a good day!" "You too!" Richard replied, giving him a deep curtsey in his new rainbow dress before happily swishing out the door. As they left, they heard him muttering to himself, "Eris, a freaking ten year old, like we don't have enough problems with the Munchausen's..." "So, where to now?" Caroline asked. "There's a local mall I've never been to," Susie said. "With him like that?" Leslie asked, eyes wide open. Caroline had her eyes wide open as well. Zoe giggled, remembering what Richard had told her after he'd skipped home Monday. "He's too obviously bait. Especially in a mall, who's gonna harass a 13 year old and all his friends in the middle of a mall, especially when everyone else is staring at him too? Maybe the mall cops?" "Not around here," Susie said. "I checked, the whole reason Franklin put his store here is because this whole neighborhood is as gay as him. Well, uhh... mmmmaybe not quite that gay." They all laughed. "Unless Ricky's getting cold feet?" "Pfffffft," Richard blew out, rolling his eyes. His accomplishment and his beautiful outfit made him feel like a transcendent being. He was where he belonged, wearing what he belonged in, and with whom he belonged. Physical danger was basically zilch in a fairly upscale neighborhood with security cameras and mall cops while they walked around in a group of five, and he would gleefully, mercilessly, and irrevocably do anyone who tried to mess with any of them very, very dirty. "You got it, Princess," Caroline said, putting the car into reverse and pulling out of the parking lot. The mall was large and fairly well taken care of, but there were still puddles from where it had rained yesterday, and Richard jumped over a small one in his heels. As soon as they walked in the door, they wondered if the place had even opened properly, but on looking through the shutters, they realized that more than half the stores had been shut down for a long time; malls had been dying for years even before the pandemic. Susie had wanted her boyfriend to strut in dress and heels through a crowded mall, not a graveyard, but at least they were out together, and she abruptly held him around the side of his waist, pressing up against his elastic hoop skirt, the side of her breast pressing against his chest. He held her close with his silky glove, smiling, her head against his shoulder as they walked. They checked the directory, but it hadn't been updated in years, and Susie wanted to at least walk through with her friends anyway even if the place was mostly shut down. "Check it," Caroline warned. A middle-aged guy with long hair and a stubbly beard was coming straight up to them only a few minutes after they'd entered, holding up a hand in peace. "Where'd you buy that rainbow stuff at?" he asked immediately, clearly not wanting to be seen as a creep. "Spectral Boutique," Susie answered, remembering the name first because she'd known about the place. "Thank you!" the man replied, searching on his phone while leaving. Another nearby lady started tapping on her phone as well. They realized that they'd gotten Franklin a customer or two. It hadn't occurred to Richard, or any of them, that things like that could happen - that he'd be approached not by people wanting to harass him or ask where his parents were or call him gay but by people who were simply curious or envious. He wondered if the man would walk out wearing the Spectral outfit or one of the super-frilly ones. "So, Zoe, do you want to wear an actually good dress on your birthday?" Susie asked, to her surprise. With everything that had been happening, it was easy to forget that Zoe's birthday was tomorrow, but none of them had. "I've been thinking about that," Zoe said. "About what I actually want to look like. I wouldn't mind a real dress, but I don't want some humiliating, childish crap, I want to look like a queen." "You asked the right person," Leslie pointed out, and they all giggled. "Right up there," Susie said, pointing out a highly upscale brand store. "I know this company." "Oh wow," the lady at the counter said as they walked in. "You're the youngest Spectral customer I've ever seen come in here. So what can I do for you all today?" "I need a dress for my birthday tomorrow," Zoe said, and smiled when the attendant wished her a happy birthday. "Dark, elegant, and not at all slutty." "Price range?" Susie intentionally laughed at the question with a smug expression and folded arms. "Are you laughing because... oh. Oh, now I remember you. It's been years. Susie, right? This was when we were back at our old location, you were twelve or so, your dad wanted everything perfect." "Yup, that's me, and that's him," Susie replied. "I'll help get your friend the perfect dress for her. This way, please." She led them straight over to the expensive section (which still wasn't anywhere near as pricey as some of the stuff Spectral had), and Richard could no longer follow the conversation after that point. He put on a dress because it fit him and it looked cute, like buying a T-shirt; they were talking about principles of which he had no knowledge. He wondered if that was how his mother had felt earlier that morning when he discussed his dark art. He shifted from foot to foot in his boots, patiently waiting as Leslie and the attendant talked about cuts and silhouettes and bustlines. Half an hour later, they were ready, and Zoe had a smug, royal expression on her face as well, hanging the well-stocked bag from one of Leslie's wheelchair handles. Richard hadn't been paying attention to how much it had cost and realized that he didn't care for the same reason Susie apparently didn't. They passed a Gamestop, and Richard was genuinely surprised that it was still open. "If you want to get any games...?" Susie asked, still totally unconcerned with finances. She was on a date with her boyfriend - her absolutely adorable, rainbow dress-wearing, high heeled, pigtailed, gloved, and diapered dark Jedi of a boyfriend - and with her friends as well, the day before the birthday of, assuming everything went right, her future sister-in-law. "Yar har, fiddle de dee," Richard replied, and Zoe briefly, quitely sang along with him. Their mother had, when given a Christmas bonus a couple years ago, purchased them decent computers but did not give them a lot of games, and they'd discovered other methods of getting them. Zoe was actually the one who'd taught her little brother how to torrent, and she wondered if she'd set him down the path to being able to do what he did. "Any time I start playing a video game, I just wish I was working on a car or doing something else instead," Caroline said. "I want one," Leslie replied. "I've got a PS4." She favored games with complex plotlines, things she could lose herself in and forget that she was a cripple for a while, and Susie browsed the racks with her and Zoe. Although he was still committed to unrepentant piracy, Richard looked around as well for things he might want to play with Zoe, assuming they were on PC or could be emulated. He hadn't been playing much with her and realized that he should have been, this whole time, if not video games then something else. The two of them hadn't ever been that close, even before that nasty Christmas. Richard was generally avoidant of people in general, the sort of kid who hadn't had friends and hadn't really cared that he didn't. If he hadn't conjured up that fake bet, he would have never met Susie (the idea struck utter, primordial fear into him) and never would have saved Leslie, and abruptly he shuddered. His thoughts were interrupted by the store clerk. "Hey, where's that from?" "Spectral Boutique," Richard answered. "No, I mean what movie, game...?" Zoe chuckled. Caroline rolled her eyes. "It's not from anything." "Well, that's a pretty good OC," the clerk replied, going back to his computer. Richard just sighed. He really should have expected reactions like that one, too. They finished with Leslie getting four highly recommended JRPGs, all from the used section, and they continued their walk through the mall. "I just realized, we didn't bring our swimwear," Zoe said as they passed a sporting goods store. Swimwear? Oh, right. Leslie had to be at the Y again at 3. Susie put on a bit of an imperious air. "That sounds suspiciously like asking me for something." Zoe sighed. "Sorry, we can stop at home." Susie laughed and playfully tugged on Zoe's arm towards the store. "I'm joking! C'mon. You must've had that bathing suit since last year! This counts as a birthday present." Susie noticed something in the girls' swimwear section, and a bit of a smile went across her face. As the others browsed, she quietly handed Richard a twenty and told him to be a good boy, buy his swimming trunks, keep the change, and meet them at the entrance. Dutifully, and while taking stock of the other things in the store (he really did have to become more physically active, he realized), he bought a coral pink pair of swimming trunks in his size because that was definitely his color, paid for the trunks while wearing the Spectral dress and heels without even a hint of anxiety (this was far from the first flamboyant person the experienced cashier had checked out, although he might have been the youngest), and sat on a nearby bench, patiently waiting for the girls like he'd been told to. He realized he had to pee, but Susie had put him in a diaper, so he used it like she obviously expected him to. He wondered if he'd be hit on. He really was cute, after all, a rainbow vision in a very sweet dress and heels and silky gloves with his hands daintily folded into his lap, his pigtails dangling, a soft little smile on his made-up face. He got looks, of course, from all the passers-by who he smiled at, including a mall cop who very carefully said nothing; none of them were teenage boys, as the number of teenage boys who'd hang out in a dying mall was fairly close to zero. And, as before, he was simply too obviously bait. He got up as the girls approached, his smile still on his face, as Susie matched it with an unexplained expression of mischievous glee and the others with subtle smiles. The new bag hanging from Leslie's wheelchair had more stuff than a simple bathing suit, but he knew he wasn't allowed to ask what was in it. He'd always hated surprises when he was younger - they'd nearly all been from his mother and none of them had been good - but he was ready to accept any surprise fron Susie. They returned to the car and decided what to do. None of them had spent very much time downtown before, and they wanted to walk around; there was plenty of stuff to see around the mall. "Hold up one second," Richard said, sitting halfway inside the car and changing into his flat boots. He really did love his heels, but if they were going to keep walking for a while, he didn't want the enjoyable sensation to turn into pain. Leslie got a couple of texts as they started to explore, and she laughed. Apparently, legal staff from both sides had met in the courtroom while submitting paperwork to do the exact same thing: cancel the hearing. As her dad explained, his amusement visible through the text, her birth parents' lawyer was canceling the court date before he got laughed out of it. And that was truly the end of that. "Ricky, can you come close? Like really close," Leslie said, and he bent down over her wheelchair. She hugged him, deeply and ferociously. It was a very awkward hug, out on a public sidewalk with him standing over her wheelchair wearing a dress, but neither one of them cared, and it lasted for a good ten seconds. He could feel her weak muscles shaking before she let him go. The group walked down streets and through parks, taking time to take long, winding paths and even play on unattended playgrounds. They found a swingset, and Richard laughed without a care in the world, kicking his rainbow boots happily in the air, as Susie swung beside him, her own skirt fluttering as she kicked her expensive sneakers, laughing next to him. There was even a seat-swing, and Zoe pushed Leslie a great deal higher than the thing was really meant to be pushed. Richard had never felt so utterly free, so completely euphoric, in his life, and although his intrinsic cautiousness kept patrolling for signs that something was going to go wrong, nothing did. Did the occasional dog walker or jogger know he was a boy? He couldn't have possibly cared less. When they stopped swinging, he leapt out of it, and his dress fluttered into the air, possibly exposing his damp diaper to anyone who might have been watching (no one was) and landing easily in his rainbow boots on the mulched surface. They went to the public bathroom together, as girls often do, and they were probably the first ones to have used it in days. Being changed on the cold concrete floor wasn't particularly pleasant, even if the day was warm and Susie was changing him, but he was going through the same thing as Leslie. He wondered if Susie would keep him in diapers even if the therapy worked and Leslie no longer needed them, and he realized with a rush of joy and love that she really was his princess and he really did absolutely trust her to take care of him, even make decisions for him, because he knew that she'd never, ever do anything to him that he wouldn't enjoy. (The idea came, unbidden, that she'd betray him somehow, and he shut that down hard and fast. He couldn't turn off his low-level caution, but he could and would keep it suppressed.) They went into a bookstore next, one full of old books that none of them had ever seen before (along with the characteristic, musty smell), and the prices were so low and the books were so old that Richard was able to snag five Nivens with just the change from buying his swimming trunks. It was Caroline who splurged there, finding books that she planned on giving to her father, manuals and guides to old cars that she thought never existed. The proprietor was also old, old enough to have seen everything, and all he told Richard was that his gloves matched his dress very well. Leslie had the most trouble, as the aisles were way too narrow for her to bring in her wheelchair (Zoe kept looking to make sure no one would steal it) and she couldn't get to low or high shelves. As they left, they realized that they'd spent way more time than they thought and that it was time to start driving back. Richard wondered where the time went. Did he really spend four hours walking around and having fun in his new dress? It felt like he'd just gotten started! He couldn't remember the last time he'd been so immersed, so completely content with life, that the clock had gotten away from him. As he lacked a backpack this time, Richard changed in the car, Susie pulling up the dress as he leaned back again and gently tousling his hair out of his pigtails. He changed directly into his swimming trunks from his unused diaper, replacing his boots with his boys' socks and shoes. Caroline chuckled, noticing his contortions in the passenger's seat, but he was thirteen years old and could make them without hurting himself. As they approached the Y, Susie simply flat-out told her friends that she was buying a month of membership for everyone who didn't have one and that she intended to keep doing so. They were under 18, so the price was fairly cheap, and as Leslie greeted Mindy again, she could tell that the woman had been thinking about something. "What's on your mind?" Leslie asked. "It's just stuff your parents told me about, it turned out not to matter." The group obviously knew what was going on, and she relaxed a bit. She'd been worried about her since Wednesday, when Leslie's father had given her the bad news, right up until she got the good news. She was very curious about exactly what the hell had gone down but was simply too professional to ask adults, let alone teenagers. "Good news in the end, but we still can't slack off. You need to be in the best shape possible for it, and that's six more sessions, counting today. You ready?" "Of course," Leslie replied, and Mindy noted that the girl was even more chipper than she'd been three days ago, the two of them smiling at each other. Mindy didn't know just how much Leslie's friends were helping her, but it was obviously a lot, and Christ, if her birth parents had managed to interfere... The hour-long swim session went almost exactly as it had on Tuesday's, with Richard chasing his girlfriend around in his pink swimming trunks, but he did somewhat better despite having been walking around all day. The hot tub was still closed - Richard was still slightly peeved about that - and he walked out as he'd come in. "I guess we better get you home for your pills," Caroline told Leslie as they got in the car. "I brought a package with me, but I'm really supposed to take them with food," Leslie said. The group had eaten nothing since breakfast, and they were feeling it. "Where are we going this time?" Zoe asked, looking at Susie, expecting the name of some fancy restaurant or other. "Let's eat in," Susie said instead. "I guarantee it's healthy and I have a good assistant cook." Richard chuckled and smiled. One of the other girls might have protested, he was the hero of the day after all, but he obviously enjoyed being treated that way. Susie braided his hair again on the way there, tying the braids off with the rainbow hairbands, and helping him back into his colorful dress. He took the opportunity to try the heels he'd never tried before, the five-inch ones that put him firmly on his toes, putting his gloves back on and enjoying their silky feel. He took a step out of the car and smiled, his butt wiggling a bit as he minced up to the door. There was a slight wind, and his braids and dress fluttered in it. Richard set the table while Susie began preparations, carefully tiptoeing back and forth as he diligently and carefully placed the tableware, the contentment never leaving his face. The evening's meal was something with the interesting name of 'morgh', and while it had the 'mor-' prefix of death, it was very rich in healthy vegetables and the protein that Leslie needed. "Make sure no one is going to disturb you on Sunday," Susie whispered to him as they prepared ingredients, his gloves stashed in his pockets because he didn't want to get them messy. "Yes, Your Highness," he whispered back. He suspected that the unspoken stuff they'd bought at the sporting goods store would play a part in that. Leslie showed her friends Animal Crossing as the food cooked (the smell was wonderful), and Richard graciously and happily served it once it was done, eagerly sitting next to Susie, and they fed each other bites. It tasted even better than it smelled. They watched another romantic comedy once they were done eating, all five of them on the couch together, the girls in their socks and Richard still in his heels because he didn't want to take them off, Zoe with her arm around Leslie while Susie and Richard shamelessly embraced one another, his silky gloves often brushing against her breasts. The movie wasn't Persian this time but was still very foreign; Richard had never seen a Bollywood movie before, and neither had any of the girls except Susie, and as they laughed at the very ridiculous plot together, Richard felt such an enormous sense of well- being that he could not even imagine wanting to live any other way. Happiness, joy, love, contentment, peace, acceptance... he could not even think of the right word. Every evening that he wasn't alone with Susie, he wanted to spend just like this, even after he had a job. He did not believe in God, but he prayed from the bottom of his heart that nothing would ever take this away from him, or at least not in a way that he couldn't undo.