Eighteen-year-old Nicholas Hammerstein is at the cusp of finishing high school in his hometown of Los Alamos, NM. He has a seemingly ideal life and is blessed with loving parents, a cute baby sister, and great friends. Nicholas is a gifted student and martial artist who has dreams of leaving for college at the end of his senior year. But, living in a world of Emergent humans, he will soon find his life turned upside down as his life and the fate of a kingdom hang in the balance. His future and theirs will be determined by how he navigates the drastic changes in his body and the magical and superpowered Mergent population he joins.

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The Legal Stuff: Emerald Princess © 2016-2023 By Sofia Hammerstein
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2016-2023 By Sofia Hammerstein. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
 
 

Chapter 52: Chicken Dinner

I WOKE UP and kept my eyes shut as I heard the younger girl, Kate, talking to someone. “Ian, I have a new one that I think you’ll like...?”

“She’s just one… could pass for a little younger if she wasn’t kind of tall for her age… But, no, she’s perfect! Blonde and blue, all I’ve heard is babbling and Mama so far… That long?” I sat there and wished I could hear the other side of the conversation. But before I was alert enough to use magic, she said, “Okay, I’m sure she’ll be here?”

I decided I was a baby, and it wouldn’t matter if I’d overheard her, so I rolled over from my back to my stomach and pushed myself up. I crawled to the bars and then made it seem like it was tough to pull myself upright. The girl was still texting on her phone as I looked at her. I began babbling at her incoherently.

“Oh, is Miss Cranky Pants awake now?” she cooed.

I babbled some more at her and held my arms out to her. Then, finally, she picked me up out of the crib and squeezed my diaper, “Guess we should get you in a dry diapee before you play, huh?”

I continued babbling at her and wondered what her reaction would be. She ended up tickling me and playing with me as she changed me. I missed the touch of skin versus gloves as she did so, but I was changed pretty efficiently. She sat me down on the floor with several other babies when she was done and directed my attention to a shape-sorting toy. She left me there, and I just started pushing it around for a moment. Then, Sally came over and showed me how to play with it.

She would place a shape in and show me before encouraging me to do so. I intentionally failed a lot, but when I finally got one in, she cheered like I’d won a gold medal or something. She played with me for a few minutes, then would play with a baby beside me. I was crawling around, but she tried to get me to stand. I did for a moment and even walked a few steps, but fell down on my butt and began fussing.

“Oh hush, it’s okay, sweetheart,” she told me and hugged me for a moment.

Things went on similarly until we were gathered for lunch in another room. There was a weird table with a cutout in the middle for the caregiver to sit. All around them, on the outside, were highchair seats built into the table. “What’s the new girl getting?” Amy asked.

“She has a jar of food in her diaper bag,” she said. “Her mommy said she’d bring us a box worth of them later in the week.” I sat impatiently, fidgeting as she moved around and brought over the jar.

“She had a fit about the cold formula earlier,” Kate reminded her.

“Oh… let me check…” she said, “Yep, her mommy said most of her food she warms up too. So let me just heat this in the microwave. You have a bottle going for her already?”

“I put one in a half-hour ago. Baby girl has got a set of lungs that I’d rather not have to hear again.”

All three women laughed at me as Sally sat down and tickled me. “Are they making fun of you…?”

I cooed to act like I didn’t understand anything. I knew babies picked up more from the tone of voice than the words at the age I was supposed to be. She took time to put a bib on me before beginning to alternate feeding the five of us at her table. My turkey dinner meal was again weird for the texture, but at least it did taste like Thanksgiving. She played little games to get me and the other babies to open up and eat our food when it was our turn. At one point, she put some little pieces of cereal in front of me to see if I would eat it, but I just picked them up and smashed them together. When she put some in my mouth, I spit them back out.

“Olivia’s mom wasn’t kidding; she really doesn’t want anything solid,” she told the others.

“Seems a little immature for one there.”

“She’s young enough; it’s still okay,” Sally told them. I watched as they began taking the other babies one at a time to change and put down for naps. Finally, she brought my bottle and tried to hand it to me. I didn’t move to take it, though, “Aww… are you missing your mommy?”

“I held her bottle for her earlier. The app says Mom really only breastfeeds most of the time. Maybe she doesn’t like holding her bottle?”

“Would you like me to hold your baba for you?” She asked me

I cooed and smiled at that.

“Alright, come on, cutie,” she said and carried me over to a chair and held the bottle to my lips. I played with my hands separately a little as I nursed on the nipple. This bottle was at least a bit better temperature, and I was enjoying it before I nodded off again.

 
 

I WOKE UP to the wailing of three of the other babies and wanted to groan. I forced myself instead to sit up and crawl towards the rails. Just as I did so, I felt a clench in my stomach and the familiar uncontrollable feeling of my diaper filling up. I decided the others had the right idea and added my voice to the chorus!

Once I was on the table getting changed, I was given a soft plush animal to hold onto. I waved it in the air and was rewarded with a rattling sound. I began putting it into my mouth, but the lady said, “Let’s use your paci instead,” and inserted my pacifier.

I continued to play, alternating the good or needy baby for the rest of the afternoon until Hannah came. When I was carried to her, I made grabby hands, “Mama! Mama! Mama!” I said as she hugged me.

“Aww… she missed you,” the receptionist said.

“Was she okay today?”

“You got the app, right?”

“Yes, I saw she was changed a little bit ago from what I saw?”

“Yes,” she said, “And if you look here, there are some notes from her teachers about her being upset a few times too. But it also says she happily played for a good chunk of the time.”

“That’s good… I need Livy to be happy!” Hannah said, squeezing me and tickling me. “Ready to go home, baby girl?”

“Mama!” I said.

She smiled, took my diaper bag back from the lady, and soon had me strapped into my carrier. She stopped at a Mcdonald’s drive-thru for dinner, but of course, I was pretending to be too young to enjoy fast food. I sighed as she put me down inside and crawled straight to a sheet of paper and crayons left for days like this. I quickly scribbled a message about what I had overheard earlier. Hannah joined me on the floor and read it, asking me questions in writing that I responded to.

I watched as she typed out some texts via an encrypted app to Agent Sanders. Then, finally, there was a reply that delivery would be made that night of a wire I needed to creatively figure out how to wear and not have it seen. The usual idea of inside a shirt would obviously not work!

‘Any ideas, Caireen?’

‘Thought you’d never ask,” she said with a smirk I could feel. ‘Same place you leave your purse, ID, and weapon.’

‘It’ll hear?’

‘It will when you add this spell…?’

Caireen gave me some instructions while Hannah finished up and ate the remainder of her burger.

“Oh my God, I didn’t see what time it was!” Hannah said a few minutes later, “I bet your tummy is rumbly, huh?” Hannah said to me.

I hadn’t realized how late it was as she placed me into the high chair and began feeding me a weird chicken meal. It looked more disgusting than anything she’d given me yet, but thankfully the device made it not suck… It still wasn’t good, though, and I was desperate for her milk to wash it down afterward. “Num-num!” I told her.

“Let’s get you a bath first, sweetie.”

“Num-num!” I said again.

“It won’t take long, sweetie…” she said and then realized there might be a reason. “How about Mommy gives you a baba while your bath is pouring?”

I smiled and nodded. Hannah placed me on the bathroom floor with a bottle of apple juice that I guzzled down in a hurry to get the taste out. Then, as the tub was filling up, she asked quietly, “Not good food?”

I stuck my tongue out and put my finger inside.

“Mommy won’t feed that one to you again,” she giggled. “Guess the device has its limits!”

 
 

AFTER I DRIFTED off to sleep, I found myself in the castle in Caireen’s arms. She didn’t delay changing me, feeding me, and returning to the briefing room. Reports came in from the citadels that Camulus was giving up on breaking through the wall. Instead, it seemed he was focusing on climbing over it. The scrying mirrors showed giant ladders and structures being built that reminded me of one of the ending battles of Lord of the Rings! Our forces had attempted to target the building sites, but Camulus seemed to have learned he should use his own abilities to shield his troops.

“Any ideas?” The General had asked.

I stared at everything on the map and asked, “How much of a footprint will those scaffolding things need when they’re done?”

He shrugged and gave me a measurement that Caireen translated to about twenty feet by twenty feet. “Could we destabilize the ground?” I suggested.

“What do you mean?”

“Make it to where the ground can’t support the structures?”

She nodded, and we set off for the front ourselves. I sat patiently in her arms as she climbed up the staircases of the wall. We looked around at the troops, who all waved quietly at us and knelt or bowed. They knew their focus needed to be on the enemy, even if they weren’t actively trying the wall right then. Caireen and I changed the ground’s density so it wouldn’t hold more than one hundred pounds in weight before swallowing them into a boggy pit that bottomed out sixty feet below.

Leaving the front and returning to the castle, I began trying to game theory how I would get around our defenses. Back at the situation room, I suggested that troops patrol the edges of the valley for any signs of tunneling… That’s how I’d do it!

When I woke up in the morning, Hannah had given me the ‘wire’ from the Bureau drop, and we tested the hiding spot. Things worked beautifully! Soon I was at daycare, and Sally reviewed the information Hannah had placed into the app.

Apparently, it was supposed to be some sort of team effort type thing. The daycare and Mommy were supposed to put in when I had my diaper changes, how much I was fed, when I pooped, etc. So I was slightly mortified when Hannah whispered, “I think we’ll use something like this back home when we’re done!” I looked at her in horror, “All of our friends can help me know when you were changed!”

I turned white as she tickled me, “I wouldn’t do that to you…” she smiled.

I’d been playing on the floor for about twenty minutes after the morning nap when my bowels did their thing to let loose. Something wasn’t normal about it, though! I sat up from my crawling position and lost my balance, landing fully in the muck. It was slimier and waterier than I’d remembered happening since I’d emerged, almost like I’d just had diarrhea?

I looked down to determine the damage when Kate cried out, “Oh my god, she just had the mother of all blowouts!”

Looking down at the rug, I realized I hadn’t just sat down on a poop-filled diaper! Instead, I had squeezed the mush out of it... past the diaper cover, through my tights, and all over my dress and the ground! I looked up and did the only thing to do as a baby, I began to wail!!!

While Amy came over and picked me up, Kate ran to the trash can and vomited in the trash can. “Oh, you poor baby! I wonder what your mommy fed you last night?”

I was carried over to the changing table, which she took care to cover with a disposable pad first. Next, she gloved up and placed a pacifier in my mouth, but I wasn’t having it! She gave up putting it back into my mouth while I kept crying. Finally, my tights and diaper cover came off, totally smearing my legs in the wet poop. “I’m going to have to wash her in the tub. Can you get Kate to go fill it, please?” She asked Sally.

“She might as well do something. What a prima-donna!”

I kept crying, even though I wanted to laugh at that. Amy pulled my dress carefully down my body instead of over my head like Hannah had put it on earlier. All those soiled clothes ended up in a plastic bag, and she said, “We’ll make sure we wash those before your mommy gets here, huh?”

When she opened up the diaper, Kate had just returned. She turned back to the trash can and vomited again. “Really, Kate?” She said, “It’s just something babies do!”

She kindly wiped me up the best she could and handed me off to Kate, “Go finish washing her off in the tub.”

“But…”

“She’s clean now; you didn’t even have to do the icky part!”

Kate carried me gingerly to a waiting bathtub with some shallow water and began cleaning me. Unfortunately for her, midway through her scrubbing my back, my stomach clenched again, and I found myself and the tub covered in filth.

“Eew, Eew, Eeeeew!” She cried.

Fortunately, Sally heard her and told her to get lost. A spray nozzle came out, and she washed the tub out, sprayed me down, refilled the tub, re-washed me, and then dressed me. “There, all clean!” she told me as I calmed down. “You sure cried a lot; you want a baba?”

“Baba!” I agreed.

She smiled and didn’t give me a bottle of Hannah’s milk like I expected; instead, it had what I assumed was Pedialyte. It wasn’t my favorite, but I knew I had to have lost a lot of water in the explosions. I was the butt of good-natured poop jokes, along with Kate, the whole rest of the day. When Hannah picked me up, they asked, “what did she have for dinner last night?”

“Oh… it was a chicken meal?”

“I wouldn’t feed it to her again!” The whole story was passed along to her. I smiled and cooed as if I was happy to have caused all the trouble, but I just wanted to hide and cry!

 
 

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If you're someone who must finish a good story 'now,' consider purchasing the full book on Amazon Kindle! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BTBTTGX1 I will be posting a chapter about every other day until the complete 62 Chapters and the Epilogue are reposted.