Enigma High - Finale

 

TLDR in the description since posting a 2k word story instead of a regular cap for the finale is kinda ass.

Rumours. Small, innocuous reports that spiral into lies and conspiracies. The students of Enigma High were no stranger to rumors. Not a day passed by with some new fib spreading its way through its halls. If anything, it became the school’s leading legacy.

Big ones - the school was built atop a burial ground, ghosts roaming the hallways at night, strange objects appearing out of nowhere - seemed to stand the tests of time while small, yet harmful ones - Stacy cheating on Darren, Ms. Miller seducing some of her students, the new lunch lady spitting in people’s food - would come and go without repercussion.

To its students, the rumours of Enigma High were just that: rumours. Small little lies mixed in truths that spiced up their school days.

To things beyond the earth, beings defined only by their concept and incomprehensible to humankind, rumours were much more. Ideas in superposition, both true and false until their nature is revealed. To them, rumours held more power than reality itself. Perhaps it was that connection that led to one coming down to the Earth, within a certain city, within a certain district, right on top of Enigma High.

~~~

Walt Becker was small, quiet, and out of the way. It meant no one would notice him. Unlike his peers, he hadn’t a rumour to his name nor spread any more. It made him feel left out, but with how hateful some of them sounded, he was more so glad. A certainty within Enigma High’s uncertainty.

It made him a perfect beacon for the conceptual being.

If he could remember how it happened, he would say. However, the latest he could remember before the alien’s possession was his breakfast that day. The earliest after was while he was walking home from school, his head filled with all sorts of deep, dark voices debating cosmic behaviour before being silenced in an instant. He convinced himself he was just sleeping to alleviate his worries, though it didn’t really change anything.

The first rumour he heard, sitting in his physics class, came from his seat mate, Alice. She was consoling her friend, who believed that her boyfriend had cheated on her the day prior thanks to a rumour. Said rumour likely came from Alice herself, a girl who just loved to spike drama whenever she could.

Walt would have ignored it as usual, but this time was different. His head throbbed suddenly as hundreds of voices spoke in his ears, each one asking whether it was true. Or rather, whether it should be true. Walt himself knew it wasn’t. Her boyfriend and his friends regularly went to the arcade. When that fact arose, the voices hushed themselves.

The pattern would repeat over the day. Rumours about a teacher’s affair, the questions that would appear on a test, a student club getting shut down. Each one brought back the torrent of voices would question him. Should it be real? Should it not? Should it? Walt had enough anecdotal evidence to know the answer or at least make a reliable guess.

His only concern came about when two teachers passed by him just as he was about to leave. Something about a new private boys’ school being built nearby. One of them mentioned a rumour that a private girls’ academy would be built as well. Although he himself wasn’t completely sure, Walt simply answered the voices in his head with a ‘whatever’ to silence them quickly. He didn’t understand the implications of that harmless little answer as the alien in his body soon got to work.

~~~

The first oddity Walt saw was a girl come out of one of the old classrooms. Maybe it was her foreign uniform or her confused expression, but he knew something was wrong. The classroom she had come out of had also been turned into a costume storage for the drama club. He knew people were talking about it, but to see it happen so fast…

From then, more strange things began happening. The weird flashing locker, the goth chick bullying a couple of other girls, objects like necklaces and goggles just falling out of the sky. There was no connection between these besides the fact that they were mostly spread around by the girls. And these strange happenings seemed to draw even more rumours out of thin air.

To Walt, the next few days were hell, as the voices continued to barrel down questions. The increase in rumours only lended to his suffering. As he’d answer one, another would pop up. He’d started to answer their questions as best he could, but it would only take one moment for it to all snap.

~~~

Emiko Kisaragi was a new transfer student coming from Japan. Being in a new town in a new country, she tried to be as friendly as possible, which incidentally gained her a bit of a following. Popularity bred jealousy, though, and soon rumours of her spread through the school.

The notion of a kitsune had popped in one particular weeb’s mind, and that became a bit of a joke among some of her followers. The voices didn’t care, asking Walt every time someone mentioned it. He held up against them for so long, but eventually, after hundreds of tiny, tiny rumours about the girl, he conceded, offering a simple ‘yes’ to the one rumour he shouldn’t have answered.

Emiko’s entire history was rewritten in an instant. The plain girl became a vengeful fox spirit, her kind personality twisted into a perverse caricature. She gained knowledge of all kinds of ancient spiritual techniques and a single desire: to expand her domain. How she did it was usually up to her, but the alien tampered with her head, trying to fulfill the one rumour it had heard long before.

Emiko’s litter of fox-girls grew exponentially, from a few new girls to nearly entire classes. The many girls dutifully served their mistress, though they were typically caught quite easily. Well, more prospective girls for the better, their mistress believed.

~~~

Justin Ferworn, quarterback for the Enigma High Eagles, was many things. Rich, strong, and charismatic. It was strange for a guy in his position to be girlfriendless, so many people made theories. Maybe she was ugly and he didn’t want to be seen with her, maybe it was the opposite.

The truth, that he wasn’t actually attracted to women, got buried under the more popular theory that he had a harem of girls at his beck and call. Walt, admittedly prejudiced against the Football star, decided that was the most likely, and the alien got to work.

It toyed with Justin’s mind until he was straighter than his throws and as dominant as they thought he should be. It lurked around the Culinary Club, turning them into meek, submissive maids that’d do anything for their master. And when the master, on a power trip, demanded even more lusty maids to satisfy him, the alien gave them what they needed to increase their ranks.

Soon, they’d become one of the largest forces in the school, a secret society that recruited any that walked into their den. From nerds to jocks, to even their own master himself by accident. And without a master, they could only follow their last order, to grow forever…

~~~

To call the principal an alien was a common joke amongst most of the students and even a few teachers. The kindly old Mr. Husfelt thought it was more fun than rude, and even played along occasionally.

Aliens weren’t so common, though. The conceptual being burying itself in Walt was itself a fluke of universal proportions. So much so that even the idea of another alien on Earth, one so simplistic as a simple high school principal was a threat to its ideas. So, without a word from Walt, it changed things.

Husfelt was no longer human, his entire family history wiped away. In an instant, he became something else, a traveller from a distant world. A world that didn’t exist moments prior, though. The being weaved through the cosmos, creating entire planets, galaxies, civilizations, all to justify the likeliest reason why another alien besides itself would be on Earth. Although giving him the technology to identify itself was bad, it was the simplest course of action the multidimensional being could take.

It would all be settled soon, anyways. After all, an all-girls school needs a female principal, and she would hasten its creation without Walt’s interference.

As for the boy, he himself was confused why his principal had changed, but her awareness radiator kicked in, making everything as usual as it should be.

~~~

Walt came in on Monday morning regretting his eventual day. At this point, all the teachers and over 90% of the students were female. Needless to say, he knew people were changing.

Most of the remaining boys were staying home, waiting to get transferred to a different school, though rumours of home visits from the teachers started going around. Thanks to the being, they were now true. And so that meant far more teachers coming in now as well.

Some of the boys started to dress like girls, though that didn’t really work. The maids assimilated anyone they could find regardless of gender, and the fox litter could tell almost by magic. Sometimes even their clothes would have some magic flair that would transform them without notice.

Some tried to burn out their masculinity as brightly as possible before their inevitable change, having as much fun in the school of beauties as they could. Some simply accepted their change, at least having some control in how they ended out. And some just kept to themselves, sticking to the sides of a hallway, never making eye contact, trying to remain as invisible as possible. Just like Walt.

He thought he’d be able to make it another day. He could transfer to that boys’ school that was mysteriously built over night. He’d be able to escape this hell that he had inadvertently created.

And then he bumped into someone.

It was someone from the volleyball team, the one much too big to sustain itself. She looked over at him, offering a hand to help him up. He took it timidly, thanking her before running off. He was unaware of the girls eyeing him, wondering why there was a guy there, making up theories, and finally spreading rumours.

In an instant, the being began to change him, but he didn’t notice as his important bits melted away, trapping him as another one of the many, many girls. The conceptual being rewrote its host, turning him from boy to boyish, erasing all traces of his former life, and finally granting her her new name: Wendy.

And just like that, it was all over. The perfect host was now a victim, and so the being couldn’t stay. It spread its influence over the school, over the city, over the world, erasing all evidence of its existence. It floated off into space, endlessly wandering the void as all conceptual beings tended to do.

And so, to the Earth, everything was normal. To a certain country, things were a-ok. Within the city, things were just peachy. In a certain district, nothing out of the unusual. And in Enima Girls’ High, where rumours spread about on a daily basis, everything was simply all right.