✅🎊✂️ Hypnosis Won't Take Me There!! [alternative cut]

Chapter 391: Consequences

It didn't take long for the babysitters to tell Nyx what they had found in Adi's room. That her passport was missing, that they were sure about where she'd previously kept it, and that everyone agreed there could only be one explanation. It took slightly longer for them to fail to explain in any detail why any of them knew where the passport should have been, or why they had been looking for it. Nyx was pretty sure she could guess the answer – Caitlyn Flood seemed to be in the narrow age bracket where buying alcohol would be possible only if she had a fake ID of some kind – but the boys were both reluctant to actually admit it.

"Well, maybe we had better–" she started, and then heard footsteps descending the stairs. Belle was coming down, or possibly Lillibel. So far they'd only talked about the passport, so she didn't know for sure if the girl would be an adult after her shower or not. "Actually, it can wait. For now, I want to be sure that our guest has been entirely comfortable with your attention span this afternoon. How are you feeling..." she turned towards the door and left a pregnant pause, guessing that a name would be the easiest way to find out her current mental state.

"Belle," Belle smiled. "All grown up now. Or as much as I ever was."

"Hope we didn't stress you out too much," Jack said with a wicked grin. "Some people seem to have no self control, and want to see if they can embarrass you." Belle looked back at Garfield, and shook her head. He didn't look like someone who felt guilty for embarrassing her, or like someone who thought it was funny. It was hard to imagine him doing something purely out of malice, after he'd been so supportive all day.

"Don't try to blame him," she smirked. "That one was yours, I'm sure of it."

"Did we push you too far?" Garfield asked. The diplomatic 'we', covering for his school friend. No wonder they had Cait guarding them like a protective big sister, they couldn't help getting involved with each other's mischief. But it was different when Belle could already identify the guilty party.

"It's fine. I mean, a bit embarrassing, you know? But it made me feel so small. And like, three times. I tried to not do it, and every time it caught me just the same. That's got to be saying something." Then she glanced up and saw a brief moment of confusion on Nyx's face. Did she remember what had been on the whiteboard, or was this chat going right over her head?

"There were three things on the whiteboard, right? The last one was about having to run to the bathroom at the last second, like I was suddenly desperate. And when it happened it made me feel so helpless, I didn't imagine it would be so hard to resist. I couldn't fight it at all. It's okay, that feeling really helped me get some peace in my head. Too many little kid worries to think about the adult ones, and it was kind of fun trying. It's just, at the end we were playing out in the yard. Did you see that climbing frame they made? That was like, inspired! But I was standing on a bit of wood between two ladders when it kicked in the third time. I suddenly needed to go right that second, but I couldn't because you can't run down a ladder. And I..."

"Actually, that's not quite right," Caitlyn corrected. "But I'm not saying who wrote it, because we all saw it. We agreed it would be interesting to try. If it spoiled the day, you need to blame all of us and not try to lay it all on Jack. Okay?"

Belle and Nyx both nodded. Presumably the boys did too, but she wasn't looking at them because she already guessed near enough how they were feeling.

"We changed the last instruction. You said you'd done all three of them, and we were worried you might get bored. So we randomly picked one and changed it a little." She paused, maybe wondering if she was going to get in a lot of bother for dropping her boyfriend in it. But she continued: "It said if you start needing to pee before you finish playing in the yard, the urge will come on so quickly that you have an accident and feel real small and embarrassed."

"I'm not entirely surprised," Nyx smirked. "And I'm pretty sure I can guess whose idea it was too, if your handwriting on a whiteboard looks like it does when you're passing furtive notes to each other in school. Am I right Jack? Garfield? Caitlyn?" That got slight nods from the three babysitters, and Nyx continued: "So I think the only question remaining is: does Belle have a problem with that? Would you have insisted they omit that one if they'd asked you about it first?"

"Probably. But they can't change it now, right? It was an experiment. And it wasn't really bad, just intense. Like all the feels turned up to eleven. I didn't know how to cope with it, but it didn't hurt anybody. If they'd decided they wanted to keep me as a baby until after dinner, I think I'd have been just as happy and playful. Or if they'd reassured me that it's okay to... you know, have a little accident. It's something that happens to kids, right? Adds verisimilitude."

"You got the big words back, too," Garfield pointed out. "So you're not angry?"

Belle paused for a long second, not entirely sure. It had been a long day with many new experiences. That revelation put a different spin on what she'd experienced, and she didn't want to give an emotional response before she had time to properly think about how it had really affected her enjoyment of the day over all.

Author's Note: You may notice that the next chapter isn't number 392. While I have put all the chapters back into numerical/chronological order for this 'alternate cut' version of the story, I'm still omitting the chapters from Chastaine's point of view. These are like the "deleted scenes" feature on a DVD; they're parts of the story that I wrote and then decided not to include. They are still available as a bonus on Patreon, and will be in the Kindle version of this book, so I'm not going to change the chapter numbers. But they aren't essential to the story. If you support me on Patreon at a tier that doesn't have access to my Google Docs, or if you backed me in the past but had to cancel, then please leave a comment and I can send you a Kindle or EPUB version of the missing chapters.