Chapter 199 - Petunia's Human Form

"Are you sure you have everything you need in there?" Gem asked while watching Heize transfer the ice blue potion inside a small elixir bottle to give it to Petunia.

"I'm sure, you just need to trust me on this one, okay?" Heize said and then focused on what she was doing again.

"Where did she get those things from?"

"I don't know, they just suddenly appeared behind her," Karizze and Miss Nabi whispered to each other while looking at the potion-making tools where Heize was cooking her potion earlier.

"I'm pretty sure we saw her coming in here empty-handed, right?" Lorenz said and pushed his glasses up his nose without looking scared nor intimidated after finally accepting that this was his reality now.

"We don't even know what those things are-"

"Fily confirmed, it's safe. It's just up to how she made it if it's still safe to drink for Petunia or not," Gem said, cutting Miss Nabi's words which made her silent.

"Can I give it to her now?" Heize said and raised the icy blue bottle to show it to everyone.

"Shouldn't we wait for your friends first?" Miss Nabi said while Gem was weighing her options out and looking back and forth the potion and Petunia in a worrying state.

And just as she was about to give Heize her permission, Gem heard the door on the fiftieth-floor open, making her close her mouth and wait for her friends instead.

"Gem! Petunia!" Fily shouted while being carried by Venedette while Von and Lei just landed quietly beside them.

"There's the potion," Gem said and pointed at Heize which made Fily shift her attention to the potion which immediately made her mesmerized.

"How did you?" Fily said and trailed off while roaming her eyes around the makeshift station that Heize made so she can cook the potion with no problem at all.

"Is that a-?" Fily gasped and covered her mouth after seeing one of the tools that Heize just pulled out of nowhere.

"Fily?" Gem said and held Fily's arms to get her focus back on the topic.

"Right," Fily said and shook her head.

"Will this make Petunia human again?" Fily asked Heize who had to give the potion up to Fily so she could reach Petunia's level in Poker's arms.

"Only temporarily, I use it myself so you can be reassured that it's safe. I can even drink it now in front of you just to prove it safe before giving it to Petunia. I may be known as the heartless witch in this area but I still care about myself and my people… which is now just Petunia and me. Just decide quickly, she'll have a hard time if we stall for too long."

"Okay, you go first," Fily said even though the smell of the potion already told her that a double check was unnecessary.

"Is she the witch from the north?" Gem heard Lizzie ask her sister who immediately told her to quiet down.

In this crowded area where Petunia's life was at stake, Karizze knew that they were the ones who have to pay respect first in order to be respected too. And although Karizze was not all that respectful person, especially to her father, experiencing the loss of someone whom she had never considered important before just took a big toll on her emotions.

"I just wish she could tell us where our father is now," Karizze whispered which made little Lizzie copy her saddened face.

"I'm tired," Lizzie said which made Karizze hug her.

"Here I go," Heize said and took a drop of the icy formula down her throat, starting an unusual shapeshifting that was similar to the tablet of Prophecies.

Her cat body started acting up and in just a few more punches, Heize transformed into a dark-haired woman with snow-white skin that could immediately make anyone think that she was sick.

"Okay, put this on her and we'll give Petunia the potion now," Venedette ordered and threw a cape at Gem who was in charge of giving it to Heize and covering her exposed body from the cold.

"Thank you," Heize said which made Gem stop.

"I also want to thank you but we wouldn't have gotten here in the first place if you just went to see Petunia first, right?" Gem said and left without saying anything else.

"Thank you for completing my mission," Heize said and disappeared without anyone else noticing, all except Gem who heard what she said and just suddenly had a bad feeling about it.

"Come on Petunia, please come back," Fily said after dropping the potion in Petunia's mouth while she was still struggling with all the confusion in her brain about what was real and what was not.

Petunia had never experienced an error before with her Stat-hut and memory loss, but only this time was different. It was as if her memories were scratched like a damaged CD, only playing repetitive memories and high-pitched screeches that were hurting her brain.

"Take it out! Please!" Petunia shouted in her mind but her voice was just silent.

All of a sudden, a bright light flashed in front of Petunia's eyes. 

Even though her eyes were closed on the outside world, the insides of her memories were very different, resembling chaos and error that was uneasy to bear.

"Petunia?" she heard Fily's voice, and then Gem, and then all of her friends, calling for her.

And when she opened her eyes, she was back to the real world.

No high-pitched noises nor chaos-driven memories. Only the worried faces of her friends and the bright light that was blinding her eyes.

"W-What happened?" she asked and then attempted to turn to the side so she could stand with her little legs, but instead of four legs, Petunia felt something weird in her hands and toes, something unfamiliar from her four-legged body.

In her memories, it was easy to adapt to her human form again as she was just thinking about walking and interacting over there, but here, Petunia's fingers freaked her out! It was as if she just lost her only finger on the back and was replaced with nine more in the tip of her toes and hands!

"Stay down, don't move, you're going to be alright," Venedette said and then urged Petunia to lay back down in her bed while Gem and Fily just smiled at her.

"Am I?" she said and then trailed off after seeing Gem and Fily's excited faces for seeing her human form for the first time. 

"Am I pretty?" Petunia asked which surprised Gem as she was expecting a different and more of a no-brainer question such as 'Am I back to being human?'

"Of course! But you look like a six-year-old! How old were you when you transformed into a cat?" Fily said with a mixture of laughter that she could not hold back anymore.

She was sure Petunia was older than her, older than half of them in fact, but with this face and body? They're obviously going to have a hard time giving her the respect and authority that she would easily get if she were a bit taller and more mature-looking than the others.

"Where are we? Are we still in the alps or are we on our way back to the castle?"

"Well, we're still in the middle of both, but we'll soon get there," Gem answered.

"How about Miss Nabi? And those kids who helped us?" Petunia said even though she had never seen these kids in the first place and has only ever heard their voices while she was trying so hard to ignore the noise inside her brain, "And Heize, what happened to her?"

"Miss Nabi and her friends are now back in their village, the guards were able to find the commander who had been beaten badly and brought the kids with them to a hospital while Heize just suddenly disappeared."

"Heize just suddenly disappeared? Why?" Petunia asked and even tried to get up by herself from the unexpected decision that her old friend did.

"We don't know. She was thanking us for helping her complete her mission something, and although I don't have a good feeling about it, I just let her go since we still have that collar remains in her neck."

"Yup, we were able to track her for a good thirty minutes until the signal just stopped here and she was nowhere to find anymore," Fily said while showing Petunia a zoomed-out map of the Alps.

"I promised to help her, why did she suddenly disappear like that without even talking to me?" Petunia asked in regret, parting her short silver hair away from her eyes and tucking them back to her human ears.

Oh, how she missed her cat ears and their benefits.

Now her physical skills are back to zero and there's nothing else that she could do but train them to be better again.

"Maybe she didn't really want to help you and was just forced to give you her temporary cure because as much as I don't trust her, her words kept telling me that there's something else making her help you other than your friendship," Gem said and immediately quieted down when she saw Petunia's upset child-like face.

"Sorry I just-"

"Do you think that low of our friendship?! We were best friends and the only ones left of our city! We should be together instead of doing things on our own!" Petunia said and cried.

"Oh god, even your mental age has shrunk," Fily said while shaking her head.