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Libertyne

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Missy spared a polite glance away from the narrow blacktop for Brittany, to acknowledge that she'd heard. She then returned her attention to her driving. There was no shoulder, so there'd be no warning if a dog or cat or rabbit or squirrel jumped out of the crops which lined the country highway. Her shoulder tingled where Brittany had just touched her, and she did her best to swallow the involuntary lump that had just formed in her throat.

"Well," Missy began, drawing the word out melodically, "it's hard to explain. I've just never met anyone so--" she stole another glance at her new friend, "--so darned beautiful before." Before Brittany could protest, Missy pressed ahead: "Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to flatter you just now, I mean. Of course I've been around people who are attractive. That's old news; but I've never been around anyone who is nova attractive."

Missy chuckled, and she liked the way it felt. The laughter carried a bit of her tension away, and she relaxed a tiny amount.

"I guess I ought to get used to that," Missy mused, smiling.

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There was a sudden and unmistakable break in the tempo of the moment, as if someone had just belched at a formal dinner. The light, airy expression on Brittany's face dropped like a stone, leaving behind it a husk of happiness, a smiling mouth desperately trying to keep up a deception for the sake of eyes that couldn't help but tell the truth.

Brittany swallowed a lump and stifled a sigh. Prior to her eruption, she'd been well-liked. Well enough, anyway. True, she never quite fit in with the cliquey girls who has established their cadres back in grade school, but she didn't really care to, either. She was a middling athlete, gave up cheerleading after a year for the sake of boredom, couldn't muster the apathy to adopt a subculture persona, and scared the hell out of the nerds and geeks. And people talked, of course. Chiefly about her personal life, and the obscured nature of her home environment. She still suppressed a shiver on the off chance she heard the words "dog slut" uttered in whisper, a habit that followed her from early tenth grade through her eruption. In spite of that, however, she was generally well-liked by almost everyone. Her quirky inability to fit in with any group allowed her to adjust, chameleonlike, to wedge herself into most every group.

Things had taken a turn since she'd erupted, however. People no longer had reservations about her character or things like pecking order, what clothes she was wearing, who she hung out with, what designer trinkets she'd acquired. All she met with now was acceptance. Not just acceptance, but servility, downright sycophantry. She wasn't just likable; she was the object of desire of everyone she met. She'd known she was beautiful since she was thirteen, of course. It was hard to miss the way boys (and a good number of grown men) stared at her developing body, the way her father would tighten his hand around hers when he saw the way men his own age looked at his daughter. That Aphroditic compulsion over men of all ages became one of the tacks of being attractive that, while not entirely welcome, was not without its merits, and the power of being attractive was one that the young woman had the good sense and good ethics to try very hard not to abuse.

But now...now, attraction came from everyone. Boys of eleven, men of eighty, matronly schoolmarms in their forties...virtually every college student on the planet. Her mother. Her father. Homicidal maniac novas. It seemed everyone liked her - or at least pretended to like her - out of some atavistic, animal impulse to make manifest a chance to bed her.

And as much as she didn't like to think about it, sometimes, in the small hours of the night, when she was alone, she would sit and wonder how well-liked she'd be if she was just plain old Brittany Brown. And more importantly, who would like her if she still was.

"Yeah", she said flatly, turning her attention back to the road. "Guess I ought to, too."

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Missy stole another look away from the road, and was startled to see Brittany suddenly appearing so glum. Unconsciously, she eased off of the accelerator.

"Wait," Missy said, "Are you okay? Did I say something wrong? Am I not supposed to acknowledge the obvious?"

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Brittany sighed and grimaced tartly, her eyes still forward. "It's not your fault, Missy. It's just something I think about sometimes...you know, whether people would like me at all if I wasn't a nova. Certainly, people wouldn't like me as much, and a lot of people who like me now wouldn't like me at all. It's hard... I want to have friends, to connect with people, but it's like I can never be sure whether the person they like is Brittany or LiberTeen, and no amount of 'Oh, I know the real you', or 'Don't be silly, I'd like you anyway' can quite negate the iron-cold fact that nobody could ever say that with total honesty, nor if they could, that I could ever accept it with total faith.

"It just...it sucks", she shrugged. "To a lot of people, being well-liked is important. And I guess it is to me, too, but this feels like cheating. I feel like I was awarded a medal for a race I didn't even run. 'Something given has no value.'", she drearily recited, as if reading the unpleasant response to a question for which she already knew the answer.

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"If you cannot tell the difference between the two, then is there a difference?" Missy replied. "I mean, seriously. If it's indistinguishable, then why does it even matter?" She drove on for a moment in silence, letting the rhetorical question hang, then she continued:

"You can't separate yourself from reality and act as an outside observer, Brit. You're a part of reality. If reality appears to be one way, and you can not disprove it, and there is no practical difference, then that's the way it is. So if people like you, and you cannot sort the genuine from the nova-inspired--whatever the hell that even means, anyway--then what's it matter at all?"

Missy had, without realizing it, rediscovered empiricism.

"I liked you before I'd met you," Missy said quietly.

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Nobody would dare accuse Brittany of being a genius. Few people got close enough to even care, and fewer still got close enough to make any sort of assertion about Brittany's level of intellect. By her attitude, one might conclude of her that she was a "bright" girl at best, less likely to fall into common traps of faulty logic or poor judgment than others, at best, but not apt to win a Nobel anytime soon.

Such statements would have been accurate before her eruption, but as the girl herself was all too aware of when her mind was quiet and left to its own devices, it was the case no longer.

She sat in silence for a moment, rapidly poring over Missy's words in her mind. Like lining up a billiard shot, she turned it over, examining it at every angle, erecting wells of doubt and hastily breaking them down with the churning machinery of rationality.

Finally, she quirked her mouth up somewhat quizzically, her eyebrows knitting together, as if pensive, and with a brusk, final 'hmph', she finally exclaimed, "You know what? You're right." She sounded surprised at herself, sincere. She believed what she was saying, and her voice lumbered around like it had just tripped over some heretofore unobserved truth. "I mean, honestly. It makes sense. You're right." Still surprised at her own discovery, she momentarily layed her hand over Missy's and smiled at her. "Thanks, Missy. I guess I really hadn't thought of it that way before." She paused, recollecting, "But you know, now that I think of it, I think that's why I like meeting people over the op so much. All they get is Brittany. I mean, even if you all know me as LiberTeen, it's not as if my nova powers are communicable via electronic medium." She snorted derisively at the thought, and chuckled. "And yes. You liked me before you'd met me." Her hand squeezed the other girl's gently and retracted. "Thank you for that."

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"You're welcome," Missy said cheerfully. Her hand burned at Brittany's touch, and the warmth spread up her arm like a pleasant wave.

"I figured you'd know all that already," she continued. "I mean, it was in one of the guides which Project Utopia had given me at the Rashoud in Minneapolis: 'So You're a Nova.' Maybe it's new and you didn't get that one." Missy considered that for a moment. She didn't even know if Brittany had ever been to a Rashoud Facility. More and more new novas were skipping that, it seemed.

"You did go to a Rashoud when you popped, didn't you?" Missy asked, stealing yet another glance at her passenger.

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"Oh, yeah!", she cheerfully asserted. She chuckled, "Not that a had a lot of choice in the matter. I erupted at home, back in Missoula, and the nearest Clinic that my dad knew of was in Seattle. In hindsight, there was probably one closer, but dad wasn't exactly consulting GoogleMaps before running out the door. He was really worried about me. So was mom. I mean", she reflected, "sure, it was really scary at the time, but we can all laugh about it now. My eruption wasn't fancy like some folks'; I just got really sick. Nausea, vomiting, terrible allergic reactions, the whole thing. Dad was getting ready to take me to the hospital when I started floating above the bed, convulsing and spasming. Well, once that happened, he wrapped me in a comforter, put me on the bench of the pickup and did ninety-five solid until we got to the Clinic. It was pretty scary", she reiterated.

"I was there, oh, about five or six days. I was pretty much better after they pumped me full of inhibitors, and then there was the mandatory post-eruption observation period of forty-eight hours, but dad and I stayed on a few more days so I could get some help in using my powers and that sort of thing. I mean, my powers are pretty basic, so it didn't take a lot of helping.

"As for the pamphlet you mentioned, I guess I didn't get that one. Which is weird, because they ticked the little 'Enhanced Attractiveness' box on my file, I watched them do it. Let me tell you, that was a pretty weird thing to see. I don't even know how they judge that! Anyway, I got sent home with a ton of paperwork and reading material, but maybe that one just got lost somewhere along the way." She shrugged. "What about you?", she chirped, turning in the seat to look at Missy again. "What was it like for you?"

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"Oh, you went there," Missy laughed. "Okay, since you asked." She composed her thoughts and flexed her fingers on the steering wheel before she continued: "I erupted at about two in the morning, totally out of nowhere. At least, that's when my node manifested itself, as they like to say. I'd had a lab accident with a laser at school--long story--but I thought everything was okay. I didn't erupt right away or anything, it was delayed, as if the laser had been the trigger for a slow-motion kind of eruption. It was later that night while I was asleep that it finally happened. I was having a really bad nightmare about a horrible scaly monster chasing me, and it finally caught me and got me in a headlock, and started squeezing." Missy took a sip from her bottle of water before continuing.

"So this monster's squeezing and squeezing on my head, which turned out to just be my node migrane making itself known in the dream, and I woke up screaming. At the same time that I woke up, my eye lasers went off for the first time, blowing a huge hole in my bedroom roof.

"As you might guess, my parents freaked out bigtime, and we piled into the car and hauled ass for Minneapolis." Missy paused before revealing the next detail. "We were so scared of what might happen that I wore two pair of dark sunglasses and a welding mask the whole way there. In retrospect, it seemed kind of silly." Missy rolled her eyes in self-deprecation.

"At the Rashoud for everyone's safety they tried to inject me with Mox injector gun thingy while I was still in the driveway, but the needle broke on my skin, so they whipped out a little inhaler like asthmatics use and had me take a big drag off of it. Fortunately, that settled me down enough that they didn't have to knock my butt out or anything." Missy smiled, but a chill had crept up her spine. She had not liked the way they'd treated her at first.

"I know they have a job to do and new novas are dangerous," Missy mused, "but I really hate the way they are so fast to knock out and drug newly-erupted novas. I mean, it's so impersonal and intrusive." Missy looked Brittany in the eye. "I gave them an earful about that on my satisfaction survey, that's for sure!"

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Brittany nodded, poring over her own experience. "Yeah...", she sort of trailed off. "I really don't remember a lot about what happened when I arrived, I was still basically in shock, but I do know that the first thing they did was pump me full of Mox. I don't know that they do that to everyone, but it doesn't really sound like it was terribly necessary in your case. I mean, for me, I sort of understand, but still. I generally tend to trust doctors' judgment, since they're the ones with the degrees, but now that you mention it, the doctors there did seem awfully trigger-happy with the medication."

As the conversation rolled on, so did the journey, and at last, the old sedan took an easy right up a dirt path flanked by trees on either side, a rough, spotty stretch of road half-shaded by the sprawling arms of immense, skeletal oaks.

"Ooh!", Brittany squealed, bouncing slightly in her seat. "Is this it?"

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"Indeed it is," Missy replied, gingerly tapping the brakes as the sedan skidded to a stop on the worn gravel drive. She beeped the horn twice to announce their arrival, out of habit and politeness; Missy was sure that they'd been noticed already. It was impossible to sneak onto a farm in the summertime. Their passage down the long drive had left a plume of dust in their wake, and the steadily increasing crunching sound of approaching tires on gravel was unmistakable in the still mid-morning air.

The long gravel drive terminated in a courtyard of sorts, Iowa-style. The main farm house stood at the center, but with its garage turned toward the drive. It was flanked by barns and sheds, all of which opened toward the drive. Rutted tracks in the gravel indicated the comings and goings of heavy farm machinery. A faded and worn basketball backboard with a chain net hung from one barn, and a powerful streetlight hung from the eaves of the largest barn.

"Aunt Claire is away in Tuscumbria," Missy explained as she released her seatbelt and got out of the car, "But Uncle Mark is here somewhere."

As if summoned, Uncle Mark--Raymond's brother--appeared from around the corner of the farmhouse, strolling casually toward Missy and Brittany. He wore faded and worn carpenter's jeans and a T-shirt, but even around the farm he kept his shirt tucked in and sported a brown leather belt. A green and white trucker's cap perched on his head, emblazoned with the logo of some farm-related business. The visor did a barely adequate job of shielding his face from the sun, and his fair features bore a prematurely-weathered and permanently sunburned aspect for it. Uncle Mark was nearly the same height as Ray, but larger and sturdier-looking.

"Well hey there Missy," he drawled in a soft Iowan accent that was much less thick than expected, with a hint of Norwegian in it. "How're Ray and Amanda doing today?" Family came first here, and smalltalk about relations was the rule when making a greeting.

"Same old same old," Missy replied with a smile, employing understatement. Obviously since she'd erupted into a nova things around the house were hardly the same, but this was not the time for that conversation. In this culture it was automatically assumed that more of the same was a good thing, and Missy played along with practiced ease. "This is Brittany," Missy continued, introducing her friend.

"Well ain't that something," Mark replied with a chuckle, laying on the charm and humor with a trowel. "Missy told me you were a beautiful young lady, but--" he shook his head in amusement, "--shoo-whee, I had no idea." Mark recovered, and for a brief moment his right hand tried to decide whether to touch his cap or to extend in greeting. It compromised, and adjusted the position of his cap, settling it more comfortably on his head.

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Brittany indulged herself a small giggle and bowed slightly at the waist, a not overly-elaborate genuflection in the way of courtesy. Plenty of people told her that she was beautiful whenever she bothered to leave the house, but there was much to be said for the folksy, charming restraint and obedience to conventions of basic courtesy and decency that seemed all but extinct, the closer one got to civilization. If not for the fact that she felt she had a job to do, she reflected, she'd be quite happy to live out her days in the country, at a place just like this.

"It's a pleasure, sir", she smiled as she bowed. "Missy really built up coming out here, and I can say that she didn't embellish even a little bit. You have a lovely homestead, sir, very much like the one my parents keep in Montana."

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"Never been to Montana," Uncle Mark replied. He'd imagined that Montana had mountains and rugged terrain and not so much corn and flatness as Iowa, but he decided that perhaps Brittany had been referring only to his house and her parents' house.

"Come on, I'll show you the barn," he said, gesturing for Missy and Brittany to follow. Missy knew already where they were going, so she followed along quietly, content to let her uncle show Brittany around. Mark opened a wide swinging door set into the face of one of the fifty-foot barns, revealing farm machinery and recreational vehicles packed in tightly. Two four-wheelers were at the fore, and it was readily apparent that they'd been cleaned and prepared for this occasion very recently. Mark took the handlebar of one ATV and easily rolled it into the drive, and Missy took the other and pushed it out with considerably more difficulty.

"You make this look so easy," Missy observed. Mark outweighed his neice by at least two to one.

Just then, a mobile phone concealed in Mark's pocket began to ring. He barely reacted, lazily shrugging to Missy and Brittany.

"Finally got a tower out here," he explained, "So I figured it was time I got one of these. They do come in handy." The phone continued to ring, but Mark was unhurried. "Missy can show you how to ride," he said to Brittany, as he fished out the phone and glanced at the display. "I ought to answer this."

Mark turned away, and walked back toward the farm house, waving to Missy and Brittany as he went.

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Staying out of the way as Missy and her uncle caught up some and rolled the two newly-tuned vehicles out into the rocky dirt lot, Brittany found herself suddenly just the slightest bit afraid. The other Mr. Stutzenbach waved politely and walked away, at last attending to his phone call, and it dawned on her, finally, that she'd be riding solo. For some reason, it had entered her mind that she'd be riding passenger to Missy or her uncle, but now, left alone, two vehicles to two young women, it dawned on her that she was meant to drive. And while she was no chicken, per se, she had to confess a certain unfamiliarity with motorized conveyence that might prove problematic in the operation of a vehicle that basically existed for dangerous maneuvering.

"I, uh...", she smiled apologetically, and coughed. "I don't really have a license, and, I mean, I know how to drive, in theory, I guess, I mean, I have driven at home, but, umm...heheh..." Brittany blushed, offering Missy, in no uncertain terms, the upper hand for the moment. "A little help?", she peeped.

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Brittany's display of fainting daintiness was almost more adorable than Missy could handle, but she persevered.

"Not a problem," Missy said casually, doing her best to inject confidence into Brittany. "You'll pick it up really fast. All the kids out here have four-wheelers before they're eight years old."

She gestured at a half-dozen off-road motorcycle helmets which lined a shelf inside the open barn. "How tough are you now?" she asked. Missy had become markedly tougher when she erupted, able to stop even a bullet, although it had left a nasty bruise. She'd grown to appreciate the feel of the wind in her hair, secure in the knowledge that she could survive any ATV accident with no more than a few scrapes.

"I mean," Missy explained, "If you fly off one of these at thirty miles per hour and hit a rock head-first, will it hurt you, or is that no big deal?"

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Picking up one of the helmets, Brittany turned it over in her hand for a moment in pensive contemplation, as if mentally gauging its structural integrity.

There was a notable difference in her posture when Missy finally finished her question, complete with the oh-so pleasant imagery of flying off a vehicle only to reach ones terminus aided by their head and a helpful rock. Her body went stock still, and she shuddered, swallowing, eyes wide. "Eep." She paused, and turned back to Missy, eyes still as wide as coffee saucers, "Um...I'm pretty sure that could kill me, actually. I, uh...well, if something does happen, I'm pretty sure I could react and move fast enough on my own to get myself out of harm's way, but you never know."

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"In that case," Missy said as she retrieved her old helmet and a pair of oversized goggles from the dusty wooden shelf, "you'll want to use these." She set the safety gear on the saddle of Brittany's four-wheeler and made sure that she had her friend's attention. For the next fifteen minutes they went over the basics of operating an ATV, and soon Brittany was putting around the gravel drive in slow circles, testing the sensitivity of of the gas and brakes.

"You're doing great!" Missy shouted over the din of the noisy motor. Brittany skidded uncertainly to a stop next to Missy, and she thumbed the rubber-coated kill switch, silencing the motor. Missy had not yet clambered aboard her own vehicle because she'd been watching over Brittany.

"Okay," Missy said, "I think you're ready to follow me around. I'll take it easy for a little bit until I'm sure you've got it." She eyed Brittany's tank top and shorts. "You ought to do long sleeves and pants with that Eufiber, maybe even gloves too. There's a lot of brush where we're going and you'll get all scratched up otherwise."

Missy straddled her own four-wheeler and thumbed the starter, gunning it into life. She relaxed a moment and allowed her nova abilities to come to the fore, and she felt the surge of power that raced through her body like an electric current. Even in the midmorning sun, the area around her glowed with a red hue, as she displayed her nova form to Brittany for the first time. Her skin glowed with an odd sparkling red light, as if illuminated from within by thousands of ruby lasers, and her eyes glowed with an harsh crimson intensity, almost too bright to look at.

"I have to do this or I don't get my nova toughness," she explained, her voice amplified and echoing with an eerie inhuman and electric quality. "I know it's kind of freaky looking, sorry."

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Missy mounted the ATV while Brittany heeded her advice, turning her more casual, summery wear into something more appropriate to the day's activities: a pair of simple jeans, cowhide gloves, and an oversized BDU jacket, a more form-fitting eufiber counterfeit of the one she typically wore to bed that belonged to her father.

Brittany turned back towards Missy to straddle her own vehicle, but found herself stopping short. As her eyes took in Missy's nova persona, she had to suppress a gasp. It was unconventional, to be sure, but she was apologizing! Apologizing! Her voice was resonant and alien, yet still bore a seed of the voice Brittany knew. To someone who prided herself on her unabashed xenophilia, Brittany admitted to herself that it was inhumanly beautiful.

"Don't apologize!", she blushed, shouting over the low growl of the engines. "I think it looks really cool!" She wondered silently if the red, brilliant hue of Missy's skin was indeed full-body, and moreso how it affected how her skin felt, if at all, and furthermore made a mental note to find out if the opportunity presented itself. A moment of pregnant silence followed before Brittany realized that she'd been staring, and the look on her face might just have been a little too obvious. With an impish smile, she fastened on her helmet and goggles and climbed aboard the vehicle, revving the engine once to signal her readiness. "Lead the way!", she happily yelled.

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Missy lead the way, goosing the throttle on her four-wheeler which braaapped responsively, adding a new rut to the already rutted driveway. As socially awkward as she found her nova form, she adored that it made her tough enough to ride safely without a helmet. The feel of the wind in her hair sent an electric thrill through her entire body which only added to the one she already felt from having activated her nova ability.

After getting clear of the farmhouse and its outbuildings, Missy pointed her ATV toward a distant grove of trees which lined a twisting stream and gunned the motor. She glanced over her shoulder to make certain Brittany was following as she bounced along the edge of a cow pasture, cows on their left, and a fence on their right.

"Moo!" she shouted with delight. A half-mile later and at the far end of the pasture she skidded to a stop in the churned dirt which surrounded the cattle gate. On the other side lay the stream and the trees. Over the putting of the motor, she explained the plan to Brittany, who was doing an admirable job of keeping up.

"We've made a pretty good trail through this creekbed and the woods around it," she explained. "Just follow me at a safe distance and remember to keep your knees bent when you jump!"

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"You got it!", Brittany shouted over the chainsaw roaring of the twin engines, nodding and smiling. Four-wheeling, she'd been finding was damn fun, and she had to admit, nova or not, she was awfully proud of how well she seemed to be picking it up. Sure, this wasn't exactly the roughest terrain, but she was keeping up with Missy well enough, who certainly didn't seem to be blunting the experience on Brittany's account. She gave Missy a gloved thumbs up before watching the girl zip off ahead of her. After admiring the view for a moment (and the nature was nice, too, heheh), she throttled the engine in pursuit.

The pair speeded and bumped along the landscape, past the end of the cattle fence and splashing through a shallow break in a nearby creek, deeper into the trees and along stony half-paths, further still away from the quaint farmhouse. She half wondered if Missy was leading her somewhere in particular, or if this path just arced around and came back. Either way, she was having a marvelous time, in a marvelous place, with a marvelous person. She laughed, smiled, and continued to follow.

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Seen from above, the wooded stream wound through the central Iowa landscape like a blue and green serpent, contrasting against the vast gridlines and perfectly parallel rows of crops which dominated the landscape. Inside, so long as one did not stray too close to the edges and followed a zig-zag path, it appeared to be a vast shady forest, dappled with golden pools of sunlight. Missy lead the way, zig-zagging back and forth through the trees, splashing across the stream with each pass.

Despite her original timidity, Brittany had taken to the ATV like an off-road rider born, Missy saw. Delighted, she turned up the speed once more, gunning the motor after making yet another semicircular turn. Skipping over exposed roots, she vaulted her four-wheeler off of the stream bank at a place where the bank stood five feet higher than the stream below. Touching down midstream with an enormous splash of water, the ATV bounced into the air once. Upon landing for the second time, Missy goosed the throttle, feeling the machine buck under her as the energy from the bounce was converted into a burst of speed.

The opposite shore was sloped, and Missy aimed for it, planning to use it as a launching ramp. She hit the ramp and flew over the bank, and was startled to see a Hereford heifer grazing lazily on the other side, near her intended landing spot. Narrowly missing the cow, she skidded to a stop, then remembered that Brittany was close behind. She scooted out of the way with a moment to spare. Brittany stopped with her, and they considered the cow. The cow, for her part, was unimpressed and continued to graze happily on a patch of tasty weeds.

"She's not supposed to be out here," Missy explained to Brittany. "She probably found a gap in the fence. We'll have to put her back. Have you ever driven cattle before?"

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The cow - a heifer, she was pretty sure - looked up at Brittany with docile, patient eyes. She smiled back at it, momentarily getting up off the ATV and receding the cowhide gloves she'd formed as she went to get a closer look. She approached the animal with an easy smile, her hands up and out as she walked forward. The heifer craned its head towards her, its giant mound of a tongue spilling out to lick at Brittany's hands, tasting the saltiness of the sweat she'd built up on the ride. Brittany giggled with delight and offered her hands to the animal, who happily continued to lick. "Well", she managed to get out between giggles, "I've never really done ranch work, but actually, yeah, I don't think it'll be a problem. Should we just head back, then?", she turned to Missy.

Missy nodded, still speaking in her nova voice, which strangely seemed to not especially bother the cattle. "Yeah, we can't just leave her out here." She paused, and added somewhat quizically, "You really think it won't be a problem?"

"Nah", Brittany smiled, winking a little. "I'll have to drive really slowly to show her where to go. If you want, just keep behind her. She'll get the message."

Missy nodded in assent, and the two engines came alive again, rumbling lowly. Brittany took a rather confident lead, and surprisingly, the cow simply followed, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do, with Missy puttering behind.

The trip back was dreadfully slow, since the train could only go as fast as a heifer's ponderous gait, but the three beat a near beeline back to the cattle pen without a speck of incident, the cow placidly following Brittany's lead like a loyal puppy. When they at last had the gate in sight, Brittany dismounted the vehicle, taking the last few steps on foot, smiling as she lead the animal through the gate with a series of encouraging "Come on, girl!"s and "C'mere, sweetheart!"s. Once inside, Brittany smiled, hugged the great beast around the neck and closed the gate behind her, as naturally as if she were Annie Oakley.

Turning back to Missy, she smiled, blushed a little, and shrugged. "I'm good with animals...?", she offered.

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"So you are," Missy marvelled quietly, her eyes widening somewhat. Missy smiled and relaxed in the saddle of her ATV, and allowed her nova energy to dissipate. A moment later she looked as she had before she'd erupted-- like a typical non-glowing member of homo sapiens.

"Are you having a good time?" She asked with a smile. "I don't know about you, but I'm having a ball."

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"I'm having a great time!", she gushed, smiling ecstatically. "Should we head back out, or head back, or what? Maybe we should find and repair the breach in the fenceline? I'm good for whatever." She flashed Missy a coy smirk, feeling as though she momentarily had a more even footing, was more in her element. "Whatever you want."

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"We ought to let Uncle Mark know about the hole in the fence," Missy suggested. "There's an awful lot of it, so we'd probably be out here all day if we tried--" Missy was interrupted by the tolling of a distant bell, bright and jangly sounding.

"That's lunch!" she explained. Her nova appetite grumbled at her, a reminder of how much fuel her new body required. "Let's head back."

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Brittany nodded and smiled, reforming the gloves she'd taken off and climbing back onto the ATV. "You want to lead the way?"

Missy took point, leading them at a brisk clip back to the dirt patch they'd started from. Abruptly, the engines were cut to silence, and both young women climbed off. Brittany removed the helmet and goggles, quickly turning her outfit back to the one she'd come in so as to not raise any odd questions amongst Missy's uncle, for whom she could not decide if it would be more odd to see that her clothes had mysteriously changed or that she'd worn what she had when she'd arrived and mysteriously endured the trip unscathed. In the end, she figured the former was probably the odder of the two, and she changed back. Brittany asserted that she was fine to help usher the vehicle back into the barn, and with some straining, they were returned to their original place. "Do we need to do any sort of post-ride maintenance, Missy, or should we just head in?"

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  • 2 weeks later...

"Let's just head in," Missy suggested with a smile, a bit wobbly-kneed from all the ATV riding. She led Brittany not into the farmhouse, but around the side of the house. An enormous two-tiered wooden deck sprawled along the side of the house, featuring two picnic tables with umbrellas, a large barbecue pit made from a steel drum, and a sunken hot tub. A schoolhouse-style bell, the one which they had heard tolling earlier, hung from a black iron post adjacent to the patio.

Uncle Mark waved to Missy and Brittany with a barbecue fork from his position in front of the barbecue.

"I hope hamburgers and brats are okay," he said cheerfully. In their absence, he had clearly set to his task with enthusiasm. The bratwurst and hamburgers on the grill looked more savory than any commercial ever could. Bags of buns and paper plates and napkins waited on the picnic table alongside bottles of condiments. "Help yourselves to something to drink," he added, gesturing to an insulated cooler.

Missy opened the cooler and fished out a bottle of water. Still holding the lid open she looked over her shoulder to Brittany.

"What would you like to drink?" she asked.

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  • 2 months later...

"Anything's fine", she chirped, smiling. She spied a can of root beer inside the cooler and gestured to it, "Oh, how about that?" Missy grabbed the can and passed it to Brittany's awaiting hand, and the two young women took seats in the shade of the umbrellas, sitting across from each other with their drinks.

"That was really fun, Missy", the blond enthused. Not sure if Missy's Uncle was in earshot over the sizzling of cooking meat and the sounds of the outdoors, she spoke just to Missy, "Your Uncle's got a really nice setup, out here. This whole place is just so homey and welcoming." She smiled, and felt tempted to lay her hand atop of Missy's, which rested on the tabletop, but opted for discretion, instead. She still wasn't sure how well such a gesture would go over, either with Missy or her family. "I'm having a really great time", she said instead.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Missy uncapped her water and took a long pull on it, washing the trail dust from her mouth and enjoying the way the cold water felt running down her throat.

"I'm really glad," Missy replied, still not yet used to the idea that the LiberTeen was hanging around with her at Uncle Mark's farm. She wiped away a stray drop of water with the back of her hand. "I was really worried that you'd be bored out here. I don't know why-- you're from Montana, after all."

"All-righty then," Uncle Mark said from across the patio. He turned, revealing a platter piled high with freshly flame-broiled meat.

"Who wants what?" He asked cheerfully, crossing the patio and proffering the platter. Without the slightest change in his demeanor, he continued as if he were discussing the weather: "I understand you two will be the first same-sex prom couple in Marshalltown history. Should be something, all right. Don't be shy, I know novas eat a lot. Take what you want, I'll make more."

Missy had started to take another sip on her water, and only barely avoided choking on it as Uncle Mark had dropped his bombshell. In just thirty seconds, she'd learned volumes about her uncle that she'd never before suspected.

I guess he's okay with that, she thought.

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Brittany's eyes immediately flashed across Missy's, searching for some cue or flash of recognition, but instead found all the blood slowly draining from her face except for two pools that lit up her cheeks like Rudolph's nose. As comfortable as she was with her sexuality, she knew it was still a subject of minor unease with Missy and her family, and to have it plopped unceremoniously on the table like so much meat was...well, a little jarring, but Brittany quickly decided, not at all unpleasant.

She stifled a chuckle as she eagerly filled her plate with a small armada of hot dogs, hamburgers, steak cuts, salad, potatoes, and whatever else she could pile on to the dish, and considered her answer a moment before interjecting, since it seemed Missy had yet to seize the opportunity. She questioned herself for a moment, then almost laughed, remembered who she was, and decided to push it a bit. "I'm just happy to be going with Missy", she smiled over to Mark, using the opportune movement of her hands spreading out a napkin on her lap to place one hand on her fork, the other gently atop the one Missy rested on the table, close enough to touch but not so close as to be forced. "And especially happy to be here. Thank you so much. For everything." While she'd been referring most plainly to the meal, the hospitality, the day of relaxation, it was clear to all at the table that the disarming, wordless acceptance of the moment included.

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  • 3 months later...

Brittany's touch, even on the back of her hand, sent a surprising wave of arousal rippling through Missy's body. On the wooden bench her hips gyrated imperceptibly through one tiny circle, and a whimper lodged in her throat. She desperately prayed that it was not audible. Uncle Mark had returned to the barbecue grill, and appeared not to have noticed.

She can't stop doing that, even for a moment! Missy thought to herself, trying to stifle a nervous giggle. With a sharp inhalation, she slid her hand from beneath Brittany's and retrieved the hot dog buns and counted enough for Brittany and herself.

"Mmhmm," Missy enthusiastically echoed, trying to disguise the erotic emotion which was crawling all over her skin like a thousand caresses. "Th- thank you for making lunch Uncle Mark."

"It's no big deal," Uncle Mark cheerfully replied in his sing-song faintly Norwegian accent as he splashed the grill with water from a plastic tumbler. The grill hissed and steam billowed in clouds as he attacked the grill with a worn metal bristle brush. His powerful shoulders and arms made quick work of the residue, and then he slapped four chicken halves onto the grill, and dabbled them with a bright red barbecue sauce from a plastic butter tub.

"So," he continued, closing the grill and taking a seat across from his niece and her new friend, "How'd the ride go? How do you like Bee Creek?" He addressed the second question to Brittany as he loaded a hamburger with thick slices of red onion.

"It went really well," Missy said around her mouthful of potato salad. "Brittany picked up four-wheeling really fast." Abruptly she remembered the stray cow. "Oh, yeah, there's a hole in the fence again, too. We put a stray cow back in the pasture."

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