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Description
A girl stepped off the bus, adjusting her shoulder-strap bag as she did, and followed on behind her fellow students along the road that led from the bus stop to the school's front gates. The rusted iron bars loomed as she stepped through into the courtyard, her skirt swaying in the light morning breeze and her hands firmly placed inside her blazer. Most of the other students milling around waiting for the day's classes to start were unaware of her as she moved through them, but a couple male students on the edges of the courtyard waiting for their friends to arrive gave her a longer look up and down, and made an expression to each other as if to say 'Not bad!'. She just kept walking, head bowed slightly, her path fixed on the entrance to the main building of the school - an aged and worn place that had earned a reputation in the country as one of the most upstanding and respected institutes, and where countless generations had been bored by their elders over the years.

The girl stepped through the main doors and paused to glance at a collection of signs posted on the wall ahead of her, before turning right and heading down a corridor leading to the ladies' bathroom. Her pace quickened as she pushed through the large doors of the bathroom, her neat low-heeled shoes clicking slightly on the tiled surface. A hasty look around the room and in the stalls made sure that she was by herself, and she pulled off her bag and put her hands behind her neck, stretching.

"Oooooookay, what do we do now?" Aiden said through her voice, his consciousness in the driver's seat and in charge of getting inside the school without anyone noticing that the brown-haied girl Ayre had shapeshifted into had never been to Orthon's High School before. He paced from side to side nervously, flattening down her skirt and glancing at the wall mirror as he did.

"Calm down, you" Ayre's voice came from an echo in his mind, as she had taken a back seat in order to think up a plan during the journey from Aiden's apartment to the school grounds. "I'll figure something out."

He stopped pacing and gave herself a longer look in the mirror while adjusting her tie.
"Well, at least the uniform looks just like what the other girls were wearing..." she mumbled, pulling her socks up to mid-thigh and making small adjustments to her bra straps.

"See? I told you I got it right first try!" Ayre sniggered.

"...Though this thing still feels too damn short!" He pulled down on her skirt, which only just overlapped her socks and made her soft cheeks redden. "It's inevitably gonna ride up, and... egh..."

"Oh, stop it you!" Ayre replied and took control of her body, switching Aiden to back-seat status again. Immediately the girl in the mirror seemed to change, tension draining away and a sly grin forming on her features. She put her hands on her hips and bit her lip, looking herself over again and grimacing.

"C'mon, this is way too stuck up and boring..." She untucked her shirt from her skirt's waistband and undid the top button before stuffing her hands back in her blazer pockets.

"Muuuuch more comfortable!"

Aiden grimaced. "As much as I like the view, isn't the idea to NOT draw attention to us?"

"Psh, quiet, you." Ayre picked up her bag and rummaged through it. Though she had copied the style from observing some of the other girls beforehand, she couldn't discern exactly what they brought with them, so the bag contained a few sets of pens and pencils and a couple of blank notepads.

"A shame we couldn't sneak onto the cheerleading team in this place... I would've liked to try on the cute little uniforms" Ayre said, smirking, as she stood up and slung her bag over her shoulder.

"Definitely not!" Aiden hotly replied. "You said yourself we have to remain undetected or this guy you're chasing will panic and make a run for it. Nothing could draw any more attention to us than cheerleading!"

Ayre just pouted and shook her head. "Psh... now, speaking of remaining undetected, I'm gonna try a little magic enchantment that should make things easier for us." She raised her hands over her head and swept them down in front of her, as if brushing an invisible wall.

"If this works, whenever a regular person starts wondering who we are, they'll immediately remember us as one Heather Lawson, a quiet and hard-working girl who's been here for the last three years and keeps to herself a lot of the time. Only gets told off by the professors now and then, great at getting herself out of trouble, and a dashing mix of sexy and cute!"

She gave a sly grin to herself in the mirror, and Aiden had to admit he was impressed.
"Not a bad plan... This magical stuff is pretty handy!"

"It's not foolproof, though." The girl, now called 'Heather', turned and stepped out into the hallway, lowering her voice to a quiet murmur as the school was now filled with students moving to and fro on their way to class. "Since we're tinkering about with fake memories, and the human brain's great at convincing itself they're real by filling in the gaps, there can be... unexpected results. But it'll be fine, I'm sure!"

She glanced around at the crowds of students now in the main hall, and started off after one group of them that were headed in the same direction and looked roughly her age.

"Looks like this'll be our class... " Heather mumbled, slipping in between two groups of boys chatting to each other. "Time to see if our little enchantment works..."

As the stream of students passed the lunch room, Heather quickly glanced around the crowds and then pretended to trip, falling on her side and wincing.

"What are you doing?" Aiden perked up, alerted. Both groups of guys and a few other students passing the other way had turned to look at her, and as she hastily stood back up and mumbled 'Sorry' one of the taller boys near the back said "You okay, Heather?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine" She gave a short smile at him as he passed and quickly started keeping pace again, as if nothing had happened.

"See? Now they remember us..." She murmered as quietly as possible to herself, smirking as the stream of students finally came to a stop in a line in front of a classroom.

"I guarantee you at least two of them saw up your skirt when you fell, so yeah, they'll probably remember you." Aiden grimaced and Ayre just kept smirking.

"You mean they'll remember us - you're half the operation here! Speaking of which..." She trailed off just as the line began to filter through the door, and with a small intake of breath Aiden was thrown back into control of her body. He made a small panicked noise before biting her lip and hurriedly following the class into the room.

"I need to work out how to find this guy we're looking for, so cover me for a while will you?"

Heather just clenched her teeth and began looking for a seat amongst the rest of the class, hanging around at the front pretending to fidget with her bag. Anyone whose attention was caught by the apparently new arrival were quickly caught in the effects of Ayre's spell, and instantly regarded her as just another classmate. Heather turned and walked to a seat at the back of the room and as she motioned to sit at a desk a short, curvy red-headed girl turned to look at her for a second before blinking and casually saying "Hey."

"So far so good, huh?" Ayre remarked as Heather put her bag over the chair and sat, tightly crossing her legs and biting her lip nervously. "Now just act natural while I work things out!"

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He stepped into the classroom, a handsome twenty-something man with a loose shirt and jeans and the smallest hint of stubble. His disguise was so natural, so comfortable, that he almost enjoyed coming into this place every day and teaching. It wasn't such a bad job after all, and he had a rather good relationship with his students - mostly because all the other teachers in the stuffy private school were aged stuck-ups. He sighed and placed his books on the front desk, pulling up the class register and ticking off people's names.

He paused when he looked up and felt a strange presence, as if someone had tapped him on the shoulder for attention. Up there, at the back... "Heather Lawson"? It's as if I remember her being here, but... that's not possible at all. Hmmm. I don't think you're Heather at all, are you? He narrowed his eyes as he glanced at her again, quickly noting down her name onto the end of the register and ticking it before moving on.

"Oh, I see right through you, demon. You don't fool me one bit, and I've been waiting for someone like you to show up!" he muttered to himself, inaudible beneath the noise of the class settling down.