My First Bath

After admiring my room I decide It’s gotten a bit late. I figure I might as well go check out the baths in the community bathroom at this point. I grab my nightgown and put on my slides, before heading out the door towards the bath. I hadn’t thought to order a towel, so hopefully that won’t be an issue. Now that I think about it, I didn’t really think about buying shampoo, conditioner, or any cleaning products. I really hope that won’t end up being an issue.
I make my way down to the end of the hall and through the archway. The archway hallway leads into a nicely sized restroom, five stalls and four sinks. Walking past them you enter a small curtain and find yourself in a small room with both walls having shelves with small baskets on them. There is a bench to sit down on in front of each shelf as you undress. I place my nightgown into one of the baskets, then begin to pull off my blouse and skirt. As I drop my worn clothes into another basket I notice there’s someone else’s clothes in another basket! Someone else must already be in there taking a shower or bath. On top of the shelves is a pile of white towels, I grab one and wrap it around myself covering myself up as I pull back the second curtain and enter the steamy bath area.
I don’t hear any running water, so I begin to wonder if maybe someone had just forgotten their clothes. Then a voice calls to me from the corner, “Heya kid! Long time no see!”
I turn around to see a larger bath with fancy rocks surrounding it. Lying back in it is a bandaged figure, it doesn’t take me even a second to recognize it as Tikki!
I reached for my whiteboard just to realize I hadn’t brought it with me. I freeze up, not sure what to do. I wanna talk to her, I do, but I don’t know how. “Everything okay over there?” She calls over again. I sheepishly walk over and wave my hand greeting her. She looks at me and makes an “oh” expression, “Ah! Can’t bring that paper notebook in the steamy bath huh?” She motions at me to join her, “Don’t worry about it, come sit next to me, then I can just charade what you’re saying out of you.”
I nod, stepping into the bath with one foot. The fancy bath is deeper than I thought, the corner of my towel dipping into the water as I step. Tikki laughs beneath her bandages, “Just drop the towel, don’t want it getting wet do you? We’re all girls here after all!” She giggled again, “Well, we’re all whatever we are!”
I haven’t been naked in front of anyone before minus I guess those doctors when I first emerged from my cocoon, I felt shy about letting anyone see me. Was this embarrassment, or shyness? A hand gently grabbed onto my arm gripping the towel edge. “Don’t be so scared, drop the towel and you can dive right under the water, with all this steam you can barely see anything below the water I swear!” 
I pulled my towel off of myself, holding it in front of me still covering my front side. I then as quickly as I could thrust the towel off to the side tossing it towards the side outside the bath, then darted forward towards Tikki trying to get neck deep in the bath. That was what I was trying to do at least. After tossing the towel I took my first step fully into the bath and immediately slipped forward heading straight for the rocks on the other side of the bath, then suddenly something soft wrapped around me knocking me to the side sending me crashing beneath the warm water.
I immediately shot up above the water gasping for air as I steadied my breathing. Rubbing my eyes I could see Tikki pulling her arms away from me stepping back. Had Tikki leap up to catch me? Then that soft thing was…Tikki. “Be careful Sophia, the floor can get a little slippery from products people use plus skin treatment materials building up on the floor.” Tikki was standing above the water now, I could see how her bandages continued across her entire body. I knew they were along her face, and even her arms, but to see them wrap around her stomach down even between her legs, a new level of understanding now hit me. She must have seen me staring as she dropped back down below the water, lying back against the rock she had been against before.
I tried to think of a way to say thank you. I ended up just making a lot of different bowing motions and strange moves, but Tikki seemed to get the message as she smiled at me. She raised a hand out from below the water touching her face, “Watch this Sophia.” She flattened her hand on her chin, then moved it away downward till she was holding it out towards me. “That means Thank You. I don’t know a ton of signs, but I know that one.” I can’t help grinning as I recreate moving my hand from my chin outward towards her, it feels so cool to finally learn a sign.
Tikki sinks below the water again, “Since you don’t know any signs we might as well get you a waterproof writing device for when you’re in here, you never know when you might need to say or ask something.” I nod in agreement.
“Want me to wash your hair for you? It can be a bit challenging to really get used to how to properly clean longer hair. I assume your hair wasn’t this long before, yeah?” I move through the bath and sit down in front of her, pulling all my hair up and behind me to make it easier for her to access. I’m suddenly grabbed and pulled back by Tikki, “Come on I won’t bite, get over here.” I can feel her skin press against mine as she gets me in a good position. She feels very warm, as I feel her skin I can make out rough patches, I almost turn to see what it is but stop myself to be respectful. Perhaps below those bandages she’s got some bad injuries that haven’t healed cleanly.
Tikki pulls over a pump bottle of some sort of white pearly shampoo, she pumps some into her palm before begging to lather it into my hair. She runs her fingers through my hair, it feels nice until she hits a tangle and has to fidget with it to break it up. Her fingers glide along my scalp, she must have a lot of practice doing this. I think back to hearing she had once been on Elemental Guardian Vontavia, I’d known that team for at least three years, and she hadn’t been on it then. Just how long had Tikki been a Magical Girl? How long has she been building up her skills as a woman? 
She begins making circles in my deeper hair, rubbing shampoo into my scalp. “Your hair is so lovely Sophia, it’s so soft, don’t let it get matted or hurt from neglect! Hair is a girl’s secret weapon, and you're going to want yours looking its best especially in these early days where you’re finding your new identity in the public’s eyes.” I can’t nod as she still has my hair, so I hold a thumbs up above my head.
Water is suddenly poured over me, my hair flattening and covering my eyes as water passes over it. Tikki had poured a bucket of bath water over me, washing out the shampoo. “Sorry Sophia, I should have warned you, any get in your eyes?” She leaned in closer to me, her eyes passing by the side of my face to check if my eyes looked okay. Satisfied she returned back to her previous position. “Time for some conditioner!” She reached forward for the other pearly pump bottle, but it rested just outside her grasp. She shifted even more forward, her chest pressing on me as she reached just enough to get her fingers around it. “There we go!” She happily sat back down, pumping the conditioner into her hand. Tikki is certainly older than me.
Tikki spoke up again as she rubbed the conditioner along my long locks. “Are you settling in okay? I heard you had some fun ordering yourself all sorts of items for your room today. I’m just hoping everything is going okay for you.” She sighed, “I know it can be a big leap having to suddenly adjust to not just a new life, but new body, new responsibilities, new everything. I’m here for you, and our other teammates are too. We all are going to be the closest of friends, so I hope you can come to rely on us, especially when you’re missing everything you once had.”
Everything huh? It’s true, there’s so much excitement in shopping and being rushed around from place to place I haven’t really mourned my old life. I feel okay, I don’t feel bad, but I do wish I could have said goodbye to my parents. It all happened so suddenly, one second I’m at school the next in a hospital. I wonder if I have a tombstone somewhere? They think I’m dead, so either they cremated me or they buried a false me, both are quite sad.
I reach behind me and clasp my hand around Tikki’s, causing her to pause putting the conditioner in my hair. She smiled as I held her hand, we sat there holding hands for a moment before I let go and she returned to applying. Was it by design that I have no memory of my old name, or most of my old life? Is it possible for them to keep me from feeling the depths of my sorrow by removing the key memories to treat my old life as gone? I might never have those answers.
Tikki finished applying the conditioner, and now was rubbing my scalp. As she did so she began chatting again, “So have you met any of our teammates yet? I suppose you can’t say, but I might as well give them both a introduction for when you meet them. The first is Clarice, she’s this adorable shy type, totally the type guys would find mysterious and fun to hit on. However her ability kinda messes with that image, it’s name is King, it's a hand puppet. She never takes him off, and so her image goes from cool mysterious to creepy stalker girl type!” Tikki splashed water hitting it with her fist. “And don’t think I haven’t tried to remove King, the guy is as good as glued to her, and he will totally attack you if he thinks you’re a threat! He’s not even the cute sort of puppet, he's this creepy goofy alien and-” Tikki cleared her throat realizing she was ranting, “Anyway, he allows Clarice this ability to create gravitational pulls. It’s kinda hard to explain, but you’ll understand it when you see it.” 
She stopped picking up the bucket of water again, “Ready for me to pour?” I nodded and she did. Water flowing over me dousing me again. “Our other teammate is Marcia, she’s the outdoorsy type, like the type of girl who you’d see joining the boy’s soccer team for help during practices. That’s all to say she’s pretty athletic, and probably the most straightforward of the four of us.” Tikki stood up and reached over to a basket just outside of the bath, sitting back down now holding a plastic hair brush. She began brushing my wet hair as she continued talking. “Marcia’s power is one that when activated transforms her into a more animal form. This form has boosted speed and strength as well as being marketable I’m told.” 
I turned around and pointed to her, hoping she’d understand I wanted to hear about her. She looks at my extended finger for a moment before getting what I wanted. “Of course, well you know I’m Tikki.” She smiled, “I’d call my normal self the pretty protective type, always trying to keep my friends from getting into trouble. Like, I’d be the one telling everyone we need to meet up and get our summer homework done, because I know none of you even started on it yet! Well, that’s me normally. As I am now, I think my bandages kinda force a more mysterious character onto me, like I must be hiding something crazy!” She looked down at me as she continued running the brush through my hair, “What do you think, think I got some gnarly cursed tattoos under the bandages? Or maybe dragon scales!?” I shook my head back and forth quickly, that made her giggle.
“Well, my bandages in reality have to do with my power. A long time ago, when I was in the position you are now as the new girl, I got assigned to a team called Elemental Guardian Vontavia, have you heard of them?” I shyly nodded. She smiled, “Yeah, well my friends did go on to be a pretty popular team, and MGI really loves them. Haha.” I couldn’t help feeling some sadness in that laugh. “Well, like them I have an elemental power! Paige has her water, Ivy has her rocks, Holly has her wind, and me, I got fire. But,” Tikki’s eyes looked away, dropping from how excited they looked before, “this power isn’t really one you’d consider great. MGI certainly didn’t think the public needed to see any more of it after the reactions to some of our early Spawn defeats.”
I tilted my head, I was so invested to find out what it was about her fire power that could get her removed from a team built around being the elementals. Tikki held her hand out in front of her, hovering over the water. “Watch kiddo.” Her outstretched pointer suddenly lit on fire, quickly she dunked it into the water. When it came back up I could see her pointer’s skin now had burns on it. I freaked out and looked at her to see if she was as freaked out as I was, but she just gave me a smile. “Pretty rough, huh? My bones are a never-ending fire support, so I would burn up in minutes, lucky me I’ve got skin. My skin gets in the way of the flames, pooling around it as it burns, maintaining a consistent heat, like a candle burns its wax. As you can see based on the bandages I can burn a lot, and my skin slowly heals back up to be burned again next mission. I can understand why Magical Girl who’s constantly on fire burning her skin off isn’t something MGI wants front and center for their marketing.”
Tikki could see how upset I was getting for her, she petted my head, smiling. “No need to feel bad, my power is what it is. I can still help plenty of people with it by defeating Spawn, and anyways I don’t mind the cool mysterious bandage look that bad.” She shook her head, her hair flowing through the air. “As you can see I’m pretty good about not burning my hair off, so you won’t see me burn so badly that I crumble over into ash. So don’t worry!”
I wanted to hug her, to comfort her if she really was just hiding her own sadness, but I was too embarrassed by us both being naked to actually hug her. Instead I just laid back on her, looking up at her eyes, and gave her my best smile. She smiled back, placing her brush down outside the bath. “I really should be getting out I think, gotta get some rest for a busy day tomorrow!”
I tilted my head, unsure what she meant. “You’re all moved in, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re going to ask us to do something tomorrow. Call it your senior’s intuition.”
Tikki stood back up, climbing over the bath’s edge and wrapped a towel around herself. She turned back and waved goodbye before passing past the hanging curtain separating the rooms. I sat in the bath for a bit longer, I found my fingers running along my hair, admiring just how soft and silky it was now. Tikki was really my senior, and in a not weird way I almost felt like she must be the group mom. I felt very safe in her presence, like as long as she’s around nothing is ever going to go wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t put all that on her, she was just another Magical Girl, someone trying just as hard as me to stay alive and defeat the Spawn.
When we defeat all the Spawn, I wonder what will happen to us next? Do we fight whatever is in the sky watching us? Then what?
I climb out of the bath, grabbing my towel and drying myself off. I tried to see that thing girls do in movies and wrap another towel around my hair, but I couldn’t figure it out so I figured I must just be missing something so I gave up. I passed through the curtain and opened my basket to put on my nightgown and undergarments. I decided I was gonna sleep in some of the new ones I had just bought. The underwear were pretty snug, It was pretty exciting, and the bra only needed a little fidgeting with the straps before they were comfortable. Pulled on my nightgown and I was good to get back to my room.
No one was in the hallway as I walked to my door. Placing my finger on the pad the light lit up green and the door opened. I tossed my dirty clothes in the corner and flopped down on my new bed. It was pretty comfy, I was super proud of all my sheet and comforter choices. I got comfy and closed my eyes trying to fall asleep. I ended up rolling around for thirty minutes before I decided sleeping in a bra was too annoying. It was just bugging me every time I rolled slightly. Taking it off and tossing it towards the closet I wondered if girl’s usually sleep in them or was this another right of girlhood I was stumbling into? I was able to pass out now without any issue. Drifting off into a deep calm slumber.