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"Alright," Porter says. He sits a tray of corked flagons of electric blue liquid on the table at the front of the auditorium and surveys out over the collected junior-year parties. This assignment is his favorite from Advanced Likely Scenarios in Adventuring . "De-aging, yeah? Likely issue, pretty common curse to be attached to items or bestowed by an angry deity. You might also end up with kids hanging around you, it happens sometimes. This is your practice round. One member of your party goes back to about six years old; you might get some variance between species on the specifics. Due at the end of the week is a ten page report on what you did, challenges you faced and how you overcame them, and a plan of action for future encounters." He produces a set of dice from his pocket and slaps them down on the table. "You'll roll for who takes the dip down memory lane. Now who's first?"
1. Riz
Riz goes back to age five and he's teeny . Fig and Adaine make matching little gushy sounds when his little head pops out of the head of his too-large shirt. His ears are enormous and he's blinking up at all of them unsteadily.
"He was like a soccer ball before," Fabian whispers to Fig. "But now he's like a baseball."
"Shut up ," Fig whispers back, because she's already reaching to scoop him. He screeches a little and his little claws are digging into her skin but it's okay. "Riz! Buddy!" He perks up at that, but he still looks a little woozy and tired. Porter said that was a side effect, but Fig wouldn't put it past him to slip them all a little bit of poison. "Hey dude. You don't know us yet, but we're your adventuring party from Aguefort."
"Whoa," Riz mumbles. He's not fighting her anymore, just looking up at her with wide-eyed wonder. "Cool." He looks around, and she sees his eyes start to well up a little bit. "Where's my mom?"
"She's at work right now," Adaine says, smoothing his messy hair out of his face, and she makes a face at Fig over Riz's head like oh my god look at him!! baby!!. "We're going to hang out and babysit you tonight, okay?"
Riz makes a face and the tears look closer than before. "Where's Penny?"
Oh, they can fix this! Fabian's already flagging her down from across the auditorium where she's talking to a very tiny Antiope. "Look, here she is," Fig says, turning him to see. His face lights up and he waves at her and she waves back as she walks over.
"Hi Riz," she says, and they do a cute little secret handshake. Fig's a little hurt. Why doesn't Riz have a handshake with her? "What's up?"
"Why aren't you babysitting me?" Riz pouts and Fig and Adaine share another look of ohmygodcute . Kristen and Gorgug have stepped away and are on the phone with someone, presumably Sklonda.
Penny hops right on board with it. "I'm busy tonight, kiddo, but these guys are super cool so have fun hanging out with them, okay?"
"Okay," Riz says. He's looking much more himself now, eyes brighter and color back in his cheeks. "Bye Penny!"
"Bye, Riz," she says, and waves to the rest of them before returning to the rest of the Maidens.
"Sklonda's up to date, says we're good to go there," Kristen says. Riz isn't listening, he's just busily scrambling up onto Fig's shoulder to perch.
"Let's go then," Fabian says, grabbing his bag and, after a second and a long sigh of impending embarrassment, Riz' briefcase.
Riz wakes up the rest of the way in the backseat of the Hangvan, and because they don't have a booster seat for him and he's too small for the seatbelts to be effective, he goes pinging around the backseat, jumping from lap to lap and headrest to headrest and chattering away about some kids' book series he's really into. It's like, kind of annoying, but in a way that's permissible because of how temporary the whole thing is and how roastable it'll be when Riz is himself again.
He zooms around the apartment, and Kristen and Gorgug seem happy to chase him while Adaine turns on the oven to put in a tray of frozen pizza rolls.
"He's so freaking cute ," Fig says, sitting on the counter and watching Adaine carefully arrange the Totinos into neat rows.
"Hopefully he wears himself out so he'll sleep later tonight," Adaine says. "I'm already tired. I don't know how Sklonda managed ."
"Fabian!!" Riz comes scooting over and his eyes are wet with tears again. "I can't find my books!"
"Uh," Fabian says, looking up from his crystal for the first time since they got here. "What books?"
Riz stomps his feet and they make the tiniest little pattering on the tiles. "My Detective Drawfee and the Clue Crew books! From the library!" His ears fold down sadly. "Mom's going to be so mad if I lost more library books."
"Well," Fabian says, pushing himself off the counter and giving them his best panic look of figure out how to fix this while I distract the kid . "Let's, uh, do like they do in the books and search for clues?"
"Ohh like a mystery!!" Riz says, tears clearing up yet again as he scrambles up Fabian's pant leg and hops to sit in the crook of his arm. They go off towards Riz's room to look for long since returned library books; Fabian shoots another look of please help make this end soon at them while he goes.
"I'll call Ayda and see if Compass Points has a set we can borrow," Fig volunteers.
"I'll check the Elmville library as a backup," Adaine says. "Gorgug, can you drive us?"
"Yeah, sure."
"And I'll keep an eye on the pizza rolls," Kristen says, hand on her heart solemnly.
Final grade: B+. Instructor comments: Leant on adult assistance from the party member's parent, allowed child to play with weaponry (don't do that), gave child coffee (I think you all learned your lesson on that one).
2. Adaine
Adaine's seven and she looks so scared . Kristen and Riz are in agreement that they would really like to give her a good hug but that it would probably not go over super well.
"Adaine," Gorgug says very gently to her. She's curled up in a little ball against the wall of the corner of the auditorium they went to for her to take her potion. He's sitting next to her and Kristen can tell he's doing a lot of very specific body language to make himself seem less threatening.
"I don't understand," she says. "Where am I? Who are you? Where are my parents?"
"You're in Solace, in a high school," Gorgug says. "You're not actually a little kid, you're sixteen but some magic turned you back into a kid. We're your friends from school, we're your adventuring party!"
Adaine sniffles, but her eyes are bright with interest. "Mother and Father would never allow me to be in an adventuring party ."
"Good thing you don't have to listen to them anymore," Kristen says and sits down to join them. She gives Adaine lots of space, but leans in a little to hand over Boggy. "This is your pet frog, Boggy. He's there to help when you feel sad, okay?"
Adaine giggles and gives Boggy a squish, but her brow is still knit. "Why don't I have to listen to them?"
"You don't live with them anymore," Kristen says carefully. "They were mean to you, right?" Adaine hesitates, then gives a small nod. "Well, you decided to leave, and now you live with me and Fig and Fig's mom and Fig's mom's boyfriend, Jawbone, who's kind of like your dad now. It's very cool and chill."
"What about -," Adaine pauses. "What about Aelwyn?"
"She lives with us too, sometimes, but she's away at college back in Fallinel right now. She's much nicer now, though. We can call her later if you want?"
Adaine pauses, picks at the too-loose fabric of her jeans. "Maybe." She says. That's fine. Adaine had warned them not to try and push any kind of good sisterly reunion or rectifying of old wrongs.
"Okay," Gorgug says. "We don't have to if you don't want to. Do you want to go get ice cream now?"
Adaine blinks at him. "It's school time."
Kristen can hear Fig let out a little snorty giggle and Adaine's ears flick back anxiously and she looks behind at Fig with wide nervous eyes. "Hey, no, it's cool, the magic spell that made you little compared to the Adaine we normally know lets us skip school this week."
"Oh. Okay," Adaine says. "Are you sure?"
"Definitely," Kristen says. She heaves herself to her feet and offers Adaine a hand up. "Here, we'll have someone shrink your clothes so they fit you a little bit better before we go."
Adaine doesn't perk up in the car, or at ice cream, or at the library when they go to pick out a few books so she'll have something age-appropriate to read this week. She's really polite, almost scary polite, even worse than she was when they first met her freshman year. Kristen can see it reflected on all of their faces how much they hate to see this version of her and how desperately they just want to wrap her in a blanket and give her a big hug. Adaine clings to Boggy, and eventually to Kristen
Gorgug drops them home to Mordred, and the boys promise to come back after BloodRush practice this afternoon. Jawbone's expression when Adaine won't look at him as she says hello is really devastating, so Kristen and Fig take her upstairs as quickly as possible.
"So this is your room," Kristen says, opening the door into her tower.
"Wow," Adaine says. She looks around at the space with wide-eyed wonder. Kristen never saw Adaine's old room, but she's got some guesses about the level of sparseness. Adaine's current tower is a mess of fairy lights and knick knacks and stacks of books and bean bag chairs. It's cozy and warm and well-lived in and well-loved.
Fig goes over and flops into a beanbag. "It's all yours, Addy," she waves her hands around the room with a grin.
"It's - it's -!" Adaine bursts into proper tears and buries her face into Kristen's stomach with a wet sob. Oh, it's hugs and healing time now baby. Kristen heaves Adaine into her arms and goes and sits in Fig's lap so they can both smush Adaine in a hug and soothe her.
Final grade: B Instructor comments: Work was good, report was excellently written but turned in three days late, most likely due to Miss Abernant needing to fully come back into herself in order to complete the assignment, and therefore docked one letter grade.
3. Fabian
They leave him alone in his bathroom with a stack of clean clothes on Friday afternoon when the potion is supposed to wear off. Adaine and Riz are sitting on his bed typing away at their final report, due at 11:59:59 tonight. Gorgug and Kristen are both on their phones sprawled out on the plush carpet. Fig's sitting at Fabian's big mahogany desk feeling itchy.
This week has been pretty rough. Fabian had (understandably) not taken the news that his father was dead well, and had spent the week alternating between being bratty and terrible, terrorizing Gilear and smashing things, and crying miserably on the couch and refusing to talk to anyone. They did their best to comfort him, but he's Fabian. Stubborn to fault when it comes to letting anyone get close emotionally. The best they could do was taking him to the river to throw rocks. Fig is really looking forward to getting their boy back.
The bathroom door slams open and they all sit up and look to him. Fabian stumbles half-dressed out and won't look at any of them. He leaves the room.
They all stare at each other. "Uh oh," Riz says, jumping down from the bed.
"Fuck," Fig agrees, going with him to quickly follow after Fabian.
They find him in the kitchen hugging Gilear and sobbing into his shoulder. Gilear looks shocked and scared, but is patting his back gently and saying something quietly to him. Riz and Fig freeze in the doorway and then quickly backpedal back around the corner.
"Huh," Riz says. "Is this a good thing?"
"Maybe." Fig's always wanted a brother. "Shut up so we can eavesdrop."
They can't really hear anything because both Gilear and Fabian are speaking very softly, so it's a surprise when Fabian rounds the corner with a blotchy face to find them pressed against the wall and guilty. He looks at them with a curious expression, somewhere between annoyance and joy.
"Welcome back, best friend," Riz says, and something really is up with Fabian that he doesn't try to immediately dunk on the best friend comment.
"Why didn't you just lie to me?" He asks Fig.
"We talked about it," Fig says. And they had, a terrible little whispered conversation held even before the die had come up with his number, about what would have to happen if it was Fabian's lot. "We decided that unless you asked us to, we weren't going to lie to your face. Even if it made you happy for the week, you would have to come back to yourself eventually."
Fabian's chest twitches and shakes like he's swallowing back new tears. Fig carefully gives him a hug. "Okay," he says against her shoulder. "Thank you for taking care of me this week."
Final grade: A- Instructor comments: Nice work, definitely a difficult set of circumstances. Alarming amount of property damage, but otherwise good.
4. Kristen
Kristen is small and sitting at the foot of Cassandra's shine sobbing and Gorgug doesn't know what he's supposed to do about that. He goes and sits beside her and tries to pat her on the shoulder, but she dodges out of the way and gets up and storms away from him.
"Why does Helio hate me?" she spins from where she's storming away back to spit it at him. Her face is red and blotchy under her freckles and there's tears and snot all over her face. "I don't understand , he chose me! Why can't I talk to him anymore?"
"Helio doesn't hate you," Gorgug says reflexively. He doesn't actually know if that's true but it's what he's got right now. "It's not that simple."
"Then explain it," she demands. Her little shoulders are shaking so hard.
There's nothing in the binder for how to handle this. Digby said to go with his instincts, so he does, and moves much faster than Kristen can to scoop her up in his arms in a tight hug. Maybe it's just Cassandra's shrine that's upsetting Kristen, so he carries her out of the little building and up to the manor house. She squirms at first, but mostly just ends up crying harder into his shoulder.
"You loved Helio, and he loved you," Gorgug says, once they're sitting on the couch in the living room. "But, sometimes? Divine plans don't always work out. Gods need different things and people need different things and sometimes those aren't compatible." Kristen sobs harder into his shoulder. "Cassandra is a really good God for you! And it's okay if you don't know that now, because you - the Kristen I know - will someday. So you've just got to get through this tough stuff for the next couple days and then you'll be better later." She's still crying and he doesn't know what else to say so he just pats her head and lets her cry herself out on his shirt.
"Thanks, Gorgug," she mumbles a little while later when she's done.
"No problem," he says. It isn't. He's talked her through crises of faith before and she's always been there for him at his lowest intelligence moments. "I don't know how to get in contact with Cassandra, but if you want to talk to them, I can try to get that set up for you."
Kristen blinks up at him. "I can already hear them in my head?"
Gorgug....did not know that was a thing they did. "Oh. Well. Nevermind."
"They're nice," Kristen says quietly. "Really loud and a little scary. But nice to me. They're scared too because I'm not myself and they're not sure if they'll get hurt from that."
"You can promise Cassandra we'll make sure they're okay," Gorgug says quickly. He doesn't know what could happen if they lose their main believer, but after the Nightmare King's forest, he's pretty sure he doesn't want to find out. "And all this is only for the next couple days until the potion wears off."
Kristen squeezes her eyes shut in concentration as she passes on the message. "Cassandra says okay." There's a rush of black light in the room and then a sixteen-year-old Kristen is suddenly sitting in Gorgug's lap. "Ah, shit," Kristen says as they look at each other in surprise. Gorgug's not really sure what's going on. Porter said that the potion had no counterspell and that cheating was functionally impossible. "Cassandra, I'm supposed to be under the spell for school!" Kristen yells at the ceiling.
A swirling vortex appears in the center of the room. "It will not do for my only cleric to be subjected to such childish pursuits." Cassandra says from the portal. "I have lifted the curse."
"No you can't , I need to be under it," Kristen says, annoyance creeping into her tone.
"Yes, I can. I'm a God and I need a cleric," Cassandra says. "Who is insisting on this disrespect to my favored one?"
Final Grade: A Instructor comments: While you utterly failed at the premise of the assignment, I will defer to the wishes of a deity that has suggested they might wipe my family tree from every point in time should you not be excused for religious reasons.
5. Gorgug
Gorgug is taller than Fabian even when he's seven, which is distinctly unfair. They're all staying at the Thistlespring tree for the week and Fabian's sure it's a very nice home. It's just not designed for five non-gnome teenagers and one half-orc kid. Wilma and Digby are extremely into "academic integrity" and "learning experiences", so they're staying with relatives for the week, leaving them with free reign to do a terrible job re-raising their son.
Fabian privately thinks they're insane. Who could know more about how to raise Gorgug than them? And they somehow think the Bad Kids are going to be able to keep him alive?
To Gorgug's credit, he's a quiet kid, even if he does break everything he touches. Adaine's having to trance constantly to restock her spell slots to cast mending every twenty minutes on whatever he's managed to shatter in his giant clumsy hands.
They realize quickly that outside is better, because outside has fewer breakable things. He, Riz, and Fig do their best to get Gorgug interested in playing a little game of street BloodRush, but he's clearly not too interested and sits inside on the (newly broken) couch working on making new little metal flowers. Kristen makes an effort to join him, but she doesn't have the patience for the work and quickly joins the rest of them in the kitchen.
"We should try harder," Riz says quietly. He looks guiltily over the breakfast bar into the living room where Gorgug is working quietly.
"He's fine," Fabian says. Gorgug wants to make flowers, they can let him make flowers. He's not getting hurt and it's probably what he did when he was being homeschooled as a kid anyways. Yes it's boring and antisocial but Fabian's fine to let him do his thing. He holds his mug out and Adaine's mage hand pours hot water from the kettle into his cup before moving onto Kristen. "He's like a plant, we feed and water him and make sure he doesn't break anything too serious and get an A."
Adaine's mouth wrinkles. "I agree with Riz. Just because this is how things used to be for him when he was a kid doesn't mean it's how they should be now."
Fig nods eagerly. "I want to get to introduce him to rock and roll again! "
Fabian rolls his eyes but shrugs. "This is the easiest assignment we could have gotten. If you want to go nuts, fine. I'm going to let him, you know, do his thing."
"Hi," Gorgug says quietly and they all jolt. He's on the far side of the breakfast bar, presumably having turned the stools into toothpicks, wearing a nervous-guilty expression.
"Gorgug!" Fabian says, then cringes at the fake excitement. He can hear Kristen snort behind him but pretends not to. "What's up my guy?"
"Oh, um, I'm hungry," Gorgug says. He's tugging on his hoodie strings nervously.
"Sure thing, bud," Riz says. "We've got pizza rolls?" Pizza rolls are the only thing any of them know how to cook. Fabian offered to have Cathilda cater, but Fig and Adaine protested that that was "cheating". Whatever. He's having her drop off meals for him, at least; he can't go all week eating only Fantasy Totinos.
"Okay," Gorgug says, and there's maybe a hint of a smile.
"Gorgug," Fig says seriously. She hands him drumsticks. Fabian is already heading into the backyard to avoid the inevitable racket and mess.
Grade: A. Instructor comments: Well written, used minimal adult support, no significant trauma to the party member. Nice work.
6. Fig
"No." Fig says, when the die spins to a halt. They all jolt and look at her, six pairs of eyes crowded around Porter's little table snapping to her. Her fists are clenched and her hackles are raised and there's that faint reddish-purple staining starting under her eyes like when she's about to cry. Fig's glaring down Porter, who looks unsurprised.
Adaine starts to protest, "Fig, it's not going to be a big deal, think about our grades -"
"I said no," Fig says, and there's an undercurrent to her calm voice. Or maybe it's just hearing her speak so calmly at all. Riz has never seen her so devoid of fire before. He grabs one of her hands and her spiky nails bite into his skin. "I won't drink it."
"Miss Faeth," Porter says. Riz can read his body language - loose posture, concerned brow - and he's clearly going to allow her to skip and maybe pass it on to one of them. Riz will be happy to do it if she asks.
She keeps talking. It's very practiced, almost. Riz wonders how long she's been thinking about this, if she rehearsed what she would say if her number came up. "First of all, tiefling biology reacts badly to the potion because of fDNA sequences that are activated at puberty that cannot be deactivated. Secondly, this assignment would cause unnecessary interplanar conflict due to my position as Prince of Hell requiring full mental facilities. Finally, this assignment requires the surrender of bodily autonomy, both mental and physical, which I take argument with. I apologize only to my party for what may happen to their grades."
"Miss Faeth," Porter says, a little sterner. He still looks sympathetic, and is shuffling around the stack of papers on the desk. Fig's still glaring at him, but based on the tilt of her head Riz is pretty sure she's actually glaring at his left ear. Also, her hand is shaking in his. "You are well within your right to refuse, and your party may complete the alternative assignment of a forty page research paper comparing and contrasting cognitive and behavioral development across four sentient races of your choice."
Fabian, Gorgug, and Kristen make horrified little noises of protest. Adaine snatches the assignment page from Porter. Fig's vice grip on Riz's hand loosens a little and he wiggles his fingers to get the blood flowing again.
Adaine skims over the paper and then nods sharply to Porter. "We'll have it done for Friday." He shrugs and waves them along. Adaine hooks her arm through Fig's other side and she and Riz guide her away from the table.
"Sorry," Fig says. Her voice is constricted with tears and Riz squeezes her hand again.
"Don't be," Adaine says. "But don't think we're going to let you get away with not helping with this paper, though."
Fig laughs and brushes at her eyes. "No, of course not."
Grade: A- Instructor comments: Nice work. Paper was clearly a collaborative effort (more so than your other group work) and while well written and researched, lacked somewhat in structure and finesse.