ic Transmutation

[Gizmo]

"It still seems more storehouse than shop front," Winifred muttered as she allowed herself to be pulled along behind the taller girl, taking quick steps to keep up. She considered the options as presented, trying to be as objective as possible. Her funds, after all, were still rather meagre by her understanding of the local economy and distressingly finite; she had no good way of replacing them any time soon. "It might be best to forego anything I would be too sorry to lose," she admitted reluctantly, shoulders slumping slightly as she imagined ruining a hypothetical favourite outfit in a momentary lapse of control. "I should just like something that fits. ...though it may not be so frivolous to have something that makes a better impression?" She'd always scoffed a bit at the idea of fashion but there was a difference between avoiding preoccupation with one's appearance and being transparently ignorant of current trends. A year of enduring smirks and snide remarks had somewhat adjusted her perceptions.

[Electra]

"Okay, what we're gonna do, is we're gonna start you at Bloomingdale's," Raina decided, with a quick look at the mall map to orient herself. "The clothes are boring, but they've got classic styles, and we'll get you fitted for a decent bra there. The ladies there do it all the time, they're like doctors, don't even worry about it. Once you get an idea of some stuff you like, some good colors and lines, then we'll branch out and get more adventurous. You carry off the baffled academic look okay, but you'll look better in more tailored clothes," she promised. "Then we'll get you a makeover, see what kind of skin gunk and colors you need, then some shoes and accessories. Perfect!" 

 

Raina started walking again, then paused and turned back to Fred. "It'll be fun, really. I won't let you be embarrassed by anything, swear to god. This is gonna be good." 

[Fox]

Matthew Rivera had led an interesting life. He had a pack of death dogs at his beck and call, he could touch the untouchable and see the dead moved to their final ends. He'd helped children get adopted, he'd helped maintain an orphanage, he knew a guy who regularly ate rodents.

 

Matthew Rivera had died at least twice.

 

Matthew Rivera was probably not ready to help his friend get fitted for bras.

 

"I'll make myself scarce when you're getting...stuff done...that isn't my business," he noted, only mostly hiding the inevitable cloud of teenage male awkwardness surrounding that topic. "I can always go look at guys' clothes, or something. But, uh, if she goes too far on the 'skin gunk' or whatever I'm pretty sure I could hold her back long enough for you to escape. Just sayin'."

[Gizmo]

"It isn't as though you haven't seen considerably more of me than I might have volunteered," Winifred pointed out to Raina, though her hushed tone and the faint colour in her cheeks belied the clinical detachment she was trying to affect. The idea of the fitting itself seemed survivable, even welcome in a world where tailoring had become the exception rather than the rule. Discussing such things openly and in mixed company was a bit much, however. Recalling some of the outfits she'd seen her classmates wear she wondered with a sinking heart what qualified as 'classic' to the witch.

 

With a prim cough she added, "Your discretion is appreciated however, Matthew. I don't think we'll be bothering with creams and powders at all, even if they've moved away from some of the more poisonous ingredients. One of the more pleasant surprises of this time was no one at the Academy asking why I didn't simply slather enough on to appear passably pale." Her tone was dry without being too bitter and she made a point of giving Raina a game smile to let her know that she appreciated the thought and earnest assurances.

[Electra]

"You don't want pale," Raina informed Fred as they walked briskly down the main concourse of the mall, dodging around small knots of shoppers. "Pale's just gonna make you look like you've been spending too many hours in the lab. You've got really decent skin already, so that's a plus. I'm not talking like caking you with makeup or anything, just the basics. If you've got some decent foundation and blush, a good coverup, some liner, shadow, and lipcolor, you're in pretty good shape. Even if you don't want the makeup look everyday, you should still have some stuff in your toolkit. Get the right makeup and a little technique, nobody ever needs to know if you're sick or you've been crying or you've got a huge zit." Raina's own makeup was fairly subtle, so at least she mostly practiced what she preached. 

 

"But anyway, clothes first. Here we go." She led the way into one of the large stores at the end of a long corridor, one that beckoned with counters full of jewelry and blank-faced mannequins wearing slacks and blouses. A moment's consultation with a map had them going up an escalator, into a section of the store that seemed entirely devoted to women's undergarments. "Peel off now, Matt," Raina advised with a smirk. "This isn't for the faint of heart." 

[Fox]

"Yeah, yeah, I said I would, already," Matt deflected, trying to not look too out of place, and failing miserably. "You do your...whatever. I'm gonna go look at jeans I can't afford, or something. Gimme a shout when you're done - my ears're pretty good."

 

He gave them an unnecessary wave as he walked away, muttering something indistinct about parts of the store that had nothing for him.

 

 

Matt really did look at the store's collection of denim, though he seemed somewhat more distracted by the pair of glowing eyes that had shown up in the darkness beneath one of the circular racks of pants. "Nuh uh," he cautioned, pretending to inspect something transparently out of his price range. "You lot leave them alone. You get us kicked out and they'll never give you treats, ever."

[Gizmo]

"Never seen so many clothes all at once..." Winifred muttered under her breath, absently returning Matthew's wave while she swivelled her head about. Despite the decor and lighting it seemed more like a warehouse to her than any sort of shop and she had a momentary twinge of anxiety at the thought of trying to find her way out again should she get separated from Raina. "I recognized the word 'toolkit' out of all of that and I suspect you used it specifically to... convince..."

 

She trailed off from dryly chiding the taller girl as they reached their destination. "Oh, Lord in Heaven," the alchemist gulped, reflexively straightening her back beyond its usual prim posture as she looked around. "That is... quite a lot more undergarments all out in the open than I suppose I was expecting. Is this something for which one typically makes an appointment? Perhaps we had better come back another day." She took a half step backward toward the escalator without seeming to realize what she was doing.

[Electra]

"Not here," Raina said with a poorly suppressed scoff, though that seemed to be more at the idea that one would make an appointment at a place like this than anything else. "You want a real professional fitting at a lingerie store and you're prepared to drop a few grand on your unmentionables, then you get an appointment. Here you just find the lady working the register and tell her you want a fitting." Matching words to action, she headed for the nearby desk and flagged down a sensibly-dressed middle-aged woman with a nametag on her blouse and a dressmaker's tape draped around her neck. "Hi, my friend doesn't know her bra size. She needs a fitting and probably three or four new bras," Raina explained with complete ease. "Can you help us out?" 

 

"Yes of course, come right this way." The woman gave Fred a friendly smile, perhaps noticing her unease, and led them into a narrow corridor of booths, each one with a latching door, a number of pegs on each wall, and several mirrors. Raina stood outside and studied herself in a three-way mirror while Fred and the shopwoman went into a dressing room and the woman put her tape to work. It was a bit strange, but fairly clinical and Fred didn't have to take her clothes off, merely raise her arms and turn from side to side while her torso was wrapped and measured. 

 

"So I've been thinking about getting a boob job," Raina called from outside, apparently bored with quiet study. "I could wear a lot more of these negligees and stuff if I had a little more oomph in the balcony rows. What do you think?" 

 

"You really ought to wait," the saleslady called back, completely unfazed. "If you have surgery before you're finished developing, you could rob yourself of your full natural figure." She wrapped her tape back up and told Fred some meaningless numbers and letters. "I'll be right back with a few things for you to look at." 

 

As she left, Raina stuck her head into the dressing room. "All good?" she asked Fred. 

[Gizmo]

She found Winifred fidgeting uncharacteristically, shifting from foot to foot and regarding her profile in the full length mirror. "I believe so? She gave me a sort of grade and I have a vague unease that I should like to have scored better." She didn't consider herself particularly vain nor dissatisfied with her figure on principle but there was something unnerving about being reduced to a specific measurement by a stranger. She seemed to realize what she was doing and cleared her throat quickly, turning to face Raina while smoothing out her clothes, attempting to tug the shapeless garments into a more flattering position. "Ah, still! That was more efficient than I feared. Thank you for handling the niceties." There was a long pause before she added with a balance of hesitation and resignation, "...'boob job' surgery is exactly what I think, I suppose?"

[Electra]

"Don't worry about it," Raina assured her blithely, "the scoring is pretty much exactly opposite of the grading scale in school, in terms of what you want to get. Well, to a certain point, anyway." She grinned. "If you get an F, they pretty much send you to a specialty store. But you're just fine, you're proportionate and that's plenty good, especially since you don't even care most of the time." She swept into Fred's dressing room and sat down on the narrow bench. "A boob job is when you don't get the letter you were hoping for and give Mother Nature a little hand," she confirmed, even as she pulled out her phone and began texting. "Some of my older friends were already getting them when I left Indiana, but my mom said no way before I was eighteen." Raina sighed dramatically. "At least there's always magic." 

[Gizmo]

"That's often been said of me, yes." Winifred allowed herself a small smirk, crossing her arms and relaxing very slightly. "'Say what you will about that girl but at least she's proportionate.'" It wasn't as though she'd expected either Raina or the saleswoman to be outright critical but the encouragement was still appreciated, coming from someone better versed in such matters.

 

Distracting herself from wondering what modern day surprises the clerk might be selecting while they waited she continued, "You do recall that you're most practiced in using your arts to set things aflame, Sanderson?" She gave the witch a look of mock seriousness, raising an admonishing finger. "Promise not to attempt any bodily alteration without one of us present. Voice of experience." Winifred sniffed and looked back to the mirror. "Not that it seems at all necessary but it is your body, after all."

[Electra]

"My techniques for body alteration are a lot less dramatic and permanent than yours," Raina reminded Fred glibly. She looked into one of the wall mirrors and hummed a few bars, scrubbing at at imaginary smudge on the glass, and suddenly she was the saleslady, right down to the dressmakers-tape scarf. "And really, who doesn't want to be somebody else every once in awhile? Whoops!" The sound of approaching footsteps had Raina passing a hand over the mirror and returning to her normal self just in time to hurry out and let the actual saleslady in. 

 

The woman carried in half a dozen bras in different colors and styles, ranging from the highly utilitarian to the extremely decorative. Raina stuck her head in again and oohed over the lacy pink and purple ones, but steered Fred towards a very staid beige model. "Try that one on," she instructed. "If you know that it's the right size, then you can buy whichever ones you want, easier that way. Just remember to bend forward at the waist and shake a little to get yourself situated in the cups," she advised, then ducked out once more. Outside, Fred could hear her having a discussion with the saleslady for a moment before moving off. A minute or two later, another four or five colorful choices were flung up to hang over Fred's door from outside. "Here's some more to choose from. Don't worry, I didn't let her come near you with an underwire. Those things are the freaking worst." 

[Gizmo]

Winifred considered the beige bra Raina had pressed into her hands for a moment before letting out an impatient huff and steeling herself against her more delicate sensibilities. Using the store's changing room was no different from the communal showering facilities at the Academy; more private even, without a lineup of girls outside the door irritable from the early hour. With that logic firmly front of mind she quickly shed her top and the one-size-fits-none-particularly-well arrangement she'd been provided with when she arrived at the school and replaced it with the new model. It still took her the better part of a minute to convince herself that no one could possibly be watching before following her friend's advice about shaking. The timing worked out so that the appearance of the second wave of options very nearly caused the startled Victorian to jump out of her skin.

 

"I'll take your word," she called back with a slight strain, inner voice divided between chiding herself and reciting the mental exercises she'd been practicing. She most certainly was not going to have an episode over a handful of dyed cotton. On the positive side she'd moved around enough to confirm that there was really no contest. She hadn't really realized how insufficient the bulk purchased bras she'd been dealing with had been but for the first time in months she felt that she could move her arms freely without risking a critical failure or a least considerable discomfort. "Oh. That actually is much better," she wondered aloud, bobbing experimentally up and down of the balls of her feet.

[Electra]

"I know, right?" Raina called cheerfully through the door. "Try on a couple more in that size, see what you like. You should get at least a beige, a white and a black, plus a couple of pretty ones to mix it up and for, uh, spares. Then yank the tags off the beige one so we can pay for it and you can keep wearing it. You can't try on other clothes with a bad bra, nothing will fit right." A few more outlandishly colored and patterned bras found their way over the top of the door to punctuate the witch's advice. 

 

By the time Fred finished making her selections, Raina was leaning against the wall outside the fitting room, playing with her phone and with a shopping bag slung over her arm. "Anibal found a thing he wants to buy, can't really tell if it's at a store or is the store, but he'll be along in a little bit. In the meantime, I've got this." She did a magician's pass and produced a black credit card. "Let's pay for this stuff, then go round up Matt and get you some clothes people can actually look at." 

[Gizmo]

Winifred followed Raina's suggestions regarding colour selection, though her interpretation of 'mixing it up' turned out to be an equally plain navy blue, a conservative zig-zag pattern... and one of the ornamented, plum coloured affairs from the first batch, tucked between the others she was carrying as though to conceal it. "Those were not all the same size or shape," she complained as she left the fitting room with a scientist's ire toward loose application of standardized units.

 

It wasn't the first time the Victorian had seen a credit card since arriving in the present day - she didn't have to fully grasp the technology involved to understand the function - but she frowned at the rectangle in Raina's hand all the same. "I appreciate the gesture but the Academy did provide me with a stipend, after all," she objected delicately. True, she hadn't been planning to spend quite such a portion of it on unmentionables but she'd been convinced as to the benefits. Imposing upon the strained finances the taller girl took such pains to hide from their peers was too much even for her battered pride to bear.

[Electra]

"Yeah, but you'll need that to fill in your summer look, or get a windbreaker or replace stuff that gets torn," Raina pointed out as they headed for the register. "Anibal already said he was fine paying for our shopping, remember?" She waggled the card at Fred. "Just because he's not here doesn't mean he can't pay. And it's not like he'll even notice the kind of money we'll be spending today. They don't even have the kind of stores worth spending more than maybe a couple thousand dollars in here. We'd need a completely different mall. My mom and I used to go up to Chicago three or four times a year because Indianapolis was so completely useless. But anyway, unless you're planning on dropping twenty grand on school clothes, you're not even going to make a ripple." That said, she neatly appropriated all of Fred's new undergarments and marched them off to the register to pay.

[Gizmo]

"I... suppose he did say that." After consulting momentarily with her battered pride Winifred decided that imposing upon Raina's suitor was comparably bearable. She was reminded that she really needed to find a way to generate income; the part-time job opportunities for teenage chemists had proven to be scarce and her resume somewhat lacking in other employable skills.

 

She accepted the shopping bag from the witch once everything had been paid for, feeling oddly accomplished. "Following your example seems to be working out surprisingly well," she noted dryly, giving Raina about as large a grin as she'd ever demonstrated. "What do you suggest next? We should probably ensure that Matthew hasn't been adopted by another pack of roving beasts while unsupervised."

[Electra]

"We'll make a pass around this floor and see if we can find him," Raina suggested, "and then it's time for clothes, shoes, makeup, and food. Keep an eye out, see if you see anything cute you like on the mannequins. Be open-minded, wearing boyclothes is very in this year, so whatever strikes your fancy." Checking her phone one more time, she slid it into her little purse and headed out in the direction of the Juniors section. "Hey Matt, you around anywhere?" she called softly enough not to carry too far over the muzak. "We're done in Scary Bra Land!" 

[Fox]

Matt hadn't been lying about his hearing: his shaggy-haired head popped up from behind one of the displays a section or two away, and it only took him a handful of moments to navigate his way over and rejoin the group.

 

"Funny," he grumbled, hands in his pockets as he matched their stride. "Took a while. Guess it probably would, though, if you needed to get a fitting or something." Matt had never had a bra, of course, but he was just going to go ahead and assume it was an annoying process, rather than think too hard about what went into it. It was safer that way. "Find everything you need there?"

[Gizmo]

"I'll take that as largely rhetorical, since a detailed inventory might work counter to the aim of your brief absence, Mathew," Winifred pointed out breezily, pressing her lips together in an unsuccessful attempt to hide a smirk. It was a little difficult to imagine him actually getting flustered given his general lack of emoting but she found herself enjoying the banter regardless. Much of the Academy's student body was so careful about what they said in front of her it was nearly as wearying as those who were outright hostile. "But yes, a great success. Any inexperience aside, I was thankfully in capable hands with Raina. She was just telling me about boys' pants."

[Electra]

"Because I'm an expert," Raina added, completely nonchalant. "You could stand to pick up a few new things yourself," she told Matt, bluntly but not exactly unkindly. "While we're out and about anyway, you know? We'll just toss it all on Anibal's card." She tapped Fred's elbow to steer her into the Juniors section, which was studded with its own complement of mannequins and many, many racks of clothes. "So just reasonably fashionable school wear for now?" she guessed. "Mostly slacks, maybe some mix-and-match sets, stuff that's not going to get shredded by the poor excuses for washing machines in the laundry room?" 

[Fox]

"What, and ruin my whole second-hand chic thing?" Matt held up his hands with all the incredulity he could muster - a marked and artificial difference from his normally laid-back affect. "It takes work to look like a bum, you know. I'm kinda insulted."

 

He shrugged, shoving his hands back into his pockets. "Seriously, I don't think your boyfriend's generosity extends to me, and if you push him too far he might take that fancy card away. I'm just here to carry bags and maybe pick something up for the dogs if we hit that end of the mall. If Winifred's got the blank check, though, maybe get at least one thing that doesn't go in the machines in the first place?" He nodded toward the fancier end of the Juniors, where school fashion started to fade out into formal attire. "Assuming something general-purpose doesn't offend your fanciness, it's always good to have at least one mostly-okay suit or dress or whatever in case you have to hit a funeral...or kinda fancy party or whatever. Ain't cheap, and maybe you'll never have to use it, but I'd grab it while the grabbing's good."

[Gizmo]

"You have a practical sort of morbidity which I appreciate, Matthew," Winifred hummed thoughtfully, following the guitarist's glance toward the formal section. "And not to play the part of poor primitive but those washing machines are a marvel I don't think you lot properly appreciate. First thing first, though." She moved slowly though the racks of clothes, rubbing fabrics between her thumb and forefinger or comparing different cuts with same manner she might have held up a test tube to the light to verify its contents. "I'm not entirely familiar with all of the terminology. I know 'jeans' are the rough, blue trousers, those seem equally durable and ubiquitous. Which ones are 'slacks'?" She paused to consider a mannequin dressed in the very garment she was asking after along with a blouse that flared out past the waist.

[Electra]

Raina took Fred on a whirlwind tour of the juniors section, explaining slacks as she went, along with all kinds of other intricacies of color, cut and style. For someone who rarely seemed to study at school or care about much of anything, Raina had an excellent grasp on fashion and was more than willing to pass her knowledge along. Another salesclerk found them and began setting up a dressing room for Fred, populated mostly by outfit pieces that Raina said she ought to try on. "You should probably also get a few things to dress up your uniform too, if you can," Raina suggested. "Maybe a jacket or a belt, something to make it look a little less prefab. You're going to be doing stuff outside of school eventually, you don't want to look like another Claremont Clone." 

[Fox]

"Yeah, gotta find something you like," Matt agreed, though from his tone he wasn't quite sure whether or not he should be agreeing with Raina just on principle. "Y'don't have to be super-fancy if you decide that's not you, and you don't have to stand out, draw attention or whatever, but maybe don't be a background character in a movie. Personalize, I guess."

 

He shrugged - he'd never really used his uniform. He might have given the pants to the dogs...and he belatedly wondered what they wanted with pants. "Fancy jackets are fine, I guess, but maybe some usefulness there too? Some of 'em look nice but you'll regret it when you get caught in the rain with no hood or no waterproofing. When you don't have much, you've gotta get as much out of it as you can. ...minus the really fancy clothes. The really fancy stuff is never practical, and I think that's part of the point."