Mittens Part 10 (Finale!) (Patreon)

Thank you to all those who and supported and enjoyed this story. Enjoy this finale part of the 'mittens' story

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Mitten’s Part 10 Finale

Falling to my knees, I look up at the sky and let out a long-exasperated breath. I’m trying my absolute best, but it’s just not happening! He’s putting so much pressure on me!

“I-I can’t do it,” I say, lowering my head to meet Lars’s gaze.

Laying on the green grass, Lars looks around at the secluded field we are training in and my only thoughts are that he thinks I’m a failure.

As the gentle breeze lifts my hair and parts of my traditional Grimalkin armor clinks against my body, I form a fist and hit the floor in frustration.

“Why isn’t this working for me!?” I scream, hitting the floor once again. “This connection you keep telling me about. It’s not real! It can’t be—that’s why I can’t feel it!”

Lars purrs as he stretches out his legs. His relaxed attitude is starting to annoy me! I’m working my ass off in the mid-day sun and he’s just laying there.

“You’re not answering me, Lars!” I hiss, throwing the sword I’ve been given to the floor.

As the heavy short sword falls to the ground with a metallic clunk, Lars smirks at me before rolling his eyes.

“Princess,” he eventually answers, flicking his tail. “I know it’s frustrating that I’m pushing you day and night with this, but we must get you ready!”

Feeling the pressure, I lower my head and look at the grass.

Lars gets to his feet and moves to sit next to me on the floor. Rubbing his face against my leg, I think he’s trying to comfort me.

“This is the first time in years,” Lars purrs. “First time in years we’ve known exactly where Green is and who Green is.”

“I know,” I reply to his lecture with a long sigh.

Lars rubs his face against me again. “Princess, Green killed again last night.”

My eyes widen and look down at Lars concerned. To my dismay, Lars just smiles back like he’s happy about it. I give him a sharper look and shake my head at his expression.

“It’s a good thing,” Lars clarifies. “We’ve now got several of my spies tailing him.”

“Pun intended?” I ask, expecting him to make another cat joke.

“No,” He answers, getting to his feet to again move to a safe distance. “But you understand why I’m pressing you. We can’t miss this chance. We have a good idea of where Green is going, and we know exactly what Green looks like at this present time. We have to strike as soon as the opportunity arises!”

“I can’t move quick like you're suggesting I can!” I reply, frustrated to my core. “I can’t even hold a portal open—I’m useless for this plan of yours.”

Looking at my sword laying in the long grass, he signals for me to pick it up. “Again princess,” he says, determined, to help me.

Acting like the teenage girl I currently am, I huff and reluctantly big up the sword. Adopting the stance Lars has instructed me to do, I hold the sword towards him and I concentrate.

“Can you feel it?” Lars asks. “A deep connection within your body tissue. Do you feel a tight spring ready to uncoil at any moment? Do you feel your inner being wanting to empower you? Do you feel your natural connection, as a Grimalkin, to our home world? Let it be part of you! Let it enrich your soul.

I nod and give him a smile, but the only feeling I have within is the food I ate for lunch.

“Okay then!” Lars grins. “Think of where you want to go. Let's say the end of this field. Keep that in mind and use your connection and channel that energy into making your very first portal!”

Bracing myself and with Lars’s encouragement, I point my sword towards the sky.

“That’s it!” he cheers.

Bringing the edge of the field that we stand into the forefront of my mind, I try my best to keep it there. I tense up and grip the sword tight as the weight of it begins to make my small arms shake.

I grunt as I struggle and my body begins to tighten up.

“That’s it, Princess!” Lars applauses. “Can you feel it!? Can you feel it moving through you?”

Closing my eyes, I feel a tingle. A vibration. A feeling of fullness.

This might be it! Am I about to produce my very first portal!?

I grip harder and tense up my entire body. I’m going to force it to happen with sheer willpower!

Just as I feel success is seconds away, my stomach gurgles, and I let out the loudest and longers fart I’ve ever heard. As it ripples around us and I instantly lose concentration and drop my sword to the floor with a cheeky smile.

“I think I may have woken the dead with that one,” I giggle, going bright red as I waft away the smell.

Lars pulls a face of thunder. “Princess!” he growls deeply. “That’s not even funny! That wasn’t what I meant by ‘feel It moving through you.!”

I stop smiling as I see the frustration on his face. “I’m sorry,” I reply bashfully.

“I don’t know why you're finding this so hard!” Lars complains, rubbing his face in irritation. “You're supposed to be a pinnacle of both our kinds and all your can come up with is a breezer!”

“A breezer!” I laugh, wafting the remnants away.

“Princess!” Lars chides, clearly unhappy with my blase attitude.

“Don’t princess me!” I reply, trying to act seriously. “You’re the one teaching me!”

“I doing my best!” Lars says as his voice cracks with emotion.

Lowering his head, he wipes at his face with one paw. “I know you’ve never been taught about our people, but male Grimalkins aren’t supposed to learn any of this. So it’s really not easy for me to teach you.”

“Whatdya mean?” I ask, pulling a face. “Because you’re family wasn’t rich enough to have access to a Formador?”

“No,” Lars shakes his head. “Nothing to do with my family's status and sorry, sometimes I forget you don’t know. As a Male Grimalkin—It’s taboo for me to learn such things. Portal summoning was traditionally a female skill because the female Grimalkins have a much strong affinity to the forces that allow their creation.”

“So Male Grimalkins just didn’t learn any of it?” I ask confused, resting the side of the heavy sword against my leg.

“Nope,” Lars answers plainly. “As I said—It was seen as a hierarchy and my mother risked being an outcast when she taught me.”

“So what did the Males do?”

“Manuel labor mostly. Before the collapse, Yibixus was very female-dominated.”

“Because of this strength, you talk about?” I ask, looking at my slender feminine body. “Is that why you transformed me into one?”

Sheepishly, Lars looks at me and nods in agreement. Lifting my empty hand, I look at my slender fingers and still don’t recognize them as mine. It might look like I’m getting used to being female, but it's all for show.

“I don’t see me,” I state, holding my hand out in front of my eyes. “I know my body is female, but I don’t feel female, Lars. Some mornings I wake up expecting to feel a certain way and then I’m disappointed to find that’s not true.”

“It’s like a bad dream,” I continue, allowing my hand to flop down to my side. “I’m being told to act like a girl, dress like a girl when I’m not one.”

I lower my head and some hair falls into my eyes.

“I don’t feel like I’m me anymore. I feel like this is all just a dream and no matter what I do, nothing is going to change.”

I look at Lars and a single tear runs down my cheeks. “Am I stuck this way!? Am I stuck as a girl—as a princess?”

Expecting Lars to brush off my comments about my gender—like he usually does, he just remains silent. Patiently I wait for his response as more tears fall from my face, but he just looks up at the sky.

“It was about five years ago,” Lars says, breaking the silence as he lies out on the grass basking in the early morning sun

He looks up at me and then down at the floor—Like he wants me to sit. I do so and quickly realize he’s upset.

“I’d heard rumors that a Portal back to Yibixus had been opened. You might not think it, but I understand how you feel completely. I’m not this earth feline you see in front of you! Not one bit! So when I heard I could get back to Yibixus—I jumped at the chance to be the real me again.

I wipe the tears from my face as Lars continues to talk.

“When I got back home and became myself again, I felt an incredible surge of euphoria.” He lowers his face. “But obviously, the state of our home world meant I couldn’t stay so I had to come back through the portal.”

I nod, but wonder why he’s telling me this. I’ve already seen what it’s like.

“As I came back through the portal, I came across a group of Grimalkins attacking what they claimed to be a Virgin Formador.”

I watch as Lars’s face contorts—like he’s finding it hard to recount this story.

“Now I think back, I hate my initial reaction to them,” Lars says emotionally. “I stayed out of sight and watched that group attack what I believed encapsulated everything that was wrong with our people—a Formador that’s been born because of the orb's influence.”

Lars looks off into the distance. “You’ve gotta understand, Mitzy. Those who couldn’t change hate them. We blamed them for not wanting to help us all. I didn’t know any different.”

“What happened to them?” I ask, leaning forward with interest.

“They dragged her into the portal.” He replies, still looking away. “I did nothing to stop them.”

“Did she die!?” I shriek, expecting that to be the case.

“No,” Lars replies, clearly upset as he looks back in my direction. “At that moment, I almost wanted to join in and see if I could get myself a transformation. I did follow in after them, curious. What I saw and how I felt at that moment still haunts me.”

I watch as tears form in his eyes.

“That Grimalkin they’d captured,” he says in pain. “Was Lorelei.”

“Seriously?” I ask.

Lars nods. “She’d been mobbed by this group and they were threatening her. They knew she was a Formador and were threatening her life if she didn’t give them the transformations they wanted. All nine of them wanted to be transformed into humans and they didn’t care if that cost her her life. They were going to tie her down and leave her to endure the plight storm if she said no.”

I can see how angry this makes him. It’s written across his face plain as day.

“What happened?” I ask softly, unsure what else to say.

“Being the person she is,” Lars answers, wiping his eyes with a single paw. “She fought them as much as she could. She never gave in to their demands!”

Lars breaks down and starts sobbing. His calm and calculated demeanor is out the window as he shows me his inner demons.

“I just sat there and watched!” he howls in pain. “I didn’t come out until they’d left her bloody and beaten and waiting for an agonizing death at the hands of the plight.

“You saved her, right!?” I squeak. “Right!?”

Rubbing his face with his paw, he nods. “Of course. The plight had set in before I built up the courage to move, so I couldn’t get her back to safety open portal. As the plight raged around us, I carried her on my back until we came across that small shack I took you to. Lucky for us, it had shelter and some supplies.”

Lars composes himself. “Don’t tell her this, but I felt so ashamed of how I’d acted and I pretended only to stumble upon her at the last moment. To ease that guilt,  I nursed her back to health over several months. I kept her hidden away, knowing that other desperate Grimalkin like me would be keen to find her for the powers she possesses.”

Las gets to his feet and shakes himself off. “She later told me that she’d gone to that group with a plan to get the Orb back from Green.”

Lars pauses and looks around, before focusing back on me. “That’s how they knew she was a Virgin Formador with all her lives intact. She’s the one with the plan and she needed help, but they stabbed her in the back and only thought about themselves.

Lars shows his front fangs in frustration. “Much like how I felt,” he admits. “I saw her and only thought about getting my transformation. Only thinking about myself and not her or anyone else.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I ask, knowing it must hurt to admit things like that to me about the love of his life.

Lars rolls his eyes and then points a paw in my direction.

“I want you to know that I understand the Dysphoria your body gives you,” he replies. “Lorelei offered me the chance to be human, once I’d nursed her back to health, but I couldn’t do it to her. I still feel guilty to this day that I’d wanted my transformation over the safety of my own kin.”

Part of me starts to feel guilty about my constant moaning. Since becoming a girl, I’ve complained nonstop about my hair, clothes, and my cat features. But something sticks in my mind from when I met Lorelei.

“Lars,” I say, curious to know the truth. “Lorelei said after transforming me that she only has one more left. When you say a virgin Formador, I assume you mean she had all her life. What happened to the rest of her life force?”

“We joined my father and a group of other Grimalkins who were trying to help out our kind. They’d managed to start a company that was a front to helping Grimalkins displaced here. Being the kind and caring person she is, Lorelei used a lot of her life force to aid my father with transformations to help his crusade.”

Lars again looks in pain as he’s unable to hold eye contact.

“Me and Lorelei fell in love and even though I’m in this feline form, I started to feel like I finally belonged somewhere.”

His face turns sour. “So many good people died that night. Kind and selfless Grimalkins perusing a way to help the rest of our kind trapped on this world slaughtered in cold blood.”

I pull a face, curious to know more. Deep down I already know the answer to my question.

“That’s right,” Lar nods, reacting to my expression. “Green killed them all and all we’d worked for was destroyed.”

My mouth is left open wide and I just stare in Lars’s direction. “I’m sorry,” I say softly, almost pleased he’s finally trusting me enough to tell me the truth.

Lars cracks a smile.

“Don’t be sorry.” He says as his eyes gleam with newfound determination. “I wanted to share that with you in hopes that it might help you right now. I know it’s difficult to accept that you aren’t what you feel you should be, but this might be our chance to do something great! Do something that is beyond both of us!”

His smile is infectious. I can’t help but smile back.

“Yes, I’m stuck as an earth cat and I’m having to leave the fate of our people to a teenager,” Lars says passionately. “And yes, you’re stuck as the gender you weren’t born as, but between us, we could help thousands of people like us!”

“Who cares that I’m an earth cat!” he continues, shouting at the sky. “I’m not going to let that define who I AM!”

Feeling his passion ignites something within me.

I grip the sword in my hand tight. For once, I actually understand exactly what he’s saying and trying to teach me. I raise the sword into the air and this time I really mean it.

“I’m not a girl or a princess!” I scream at the sword I’m pointing to the sky. “But saving lives is what will define me! This is who I am destined to be!”

As a dim blue light emanated from the tip of the sword, I feel a deep vibration in my chest and in my heart.

“You’re doing it!” Lars screams out with excitement!”

I stare at the single point of light and deep in my soul I feel connected to generations of Grimalkins. Like muscle memory, I draw a perfect circle in the air with the tip of my blade.

“Princess!” Lars shouts, jumping with joy. “You did it! You’re ready!”

Ecstatic, I can’t stop smiling!

“I feel different,” I laugh, flexing my muscles. “Like I’ve lightning coursing through my veins.”

“I’m proud of you Mitzy!” Lars gushes with emotions. “You’ve come such a long way from the timid boy playing in the woods with his sister. Just look at your now! You’re the image of a noble and traditional female Grimalkin warrior!”

“Call me Princess!” I reply with a glint in my eye.