"Yeah, I'm pretty awesome." Megan leaned back in her beanbag, pretending to admire her fingernails nonchalantly.
She wilted at the memory of getting the Souldagger, though. "Illyana--she's the one who took part of my soul, at least the first time--said that it's because she needed an innocent soul. It--someone did the same thing to her when she was little, and it made her evil. So she took part of my soul and filled the hole with black magic, which is how I can teleport, because she taught me the spell after, and--ugh, it sucked." She leaned back, staring up at the ceiling. "And then someone else wanted my soul so they could open a gate to the Elder Gods, and then someone else wanted it for the same reason, and it's a huge mess. It's one of the reasons I'm glad I'm here. Nobody's started poking around trying to get my soul yet. It gets really old after a while."
Old, and painful, and sometimes all she wanted to do was be fourteen again, before any of this mess happened. Maybe even before she'd even gone to the school, but--then she would never have met her friends, and then where would she be? "You know what's kind of funny, though?" she said, propping herself up on one elbow. "After the first time, when Illyana took part of my soul? It turned my hair black. Not all the way, just mostly. I still had these pink streaks. Not so much like yours, with the red and black, it was like..." She ran her fingers back through her hair as an example, like zebra stripes or a bad dye job. "It grew out, though. It's kind of too bad, it looked cool. So at least horrible magic saves you money on hair dye. Good to know, huh?"
She laughed, a little more at ease again. "Exactly! If everyone was all the same, everything would be so boring. I can't stand boring."