Question The Micro-Scenes thread

This has been sitting on my system for close to 8 years, and has gone nowhere. Feel free to use or ignore it.

Accreditation Visit.
by Xaltatun of Acheron

Dave Steel walked into the corner office. “Hi, boss. You wanted to see me?”

“Kick the door closed and grab a chair,” Mike Darling said. “Got a question.”

“OK.”

Mike sat forward and folded his hands. “This is going to sound awfully strange. Tell me to go to hell, tell me it’s none of my business. Just don’t lie to me.”

“What the heck?”

“How do you feel about mutants?”

Dave frowned. “This is job related?”

“Yes.”

“So we’ve got some kind of mutant facility we need to do a building inspection on. Huh.” He paused. “I’ve never really thought about it. I just want to be far away when the fit hits the shan. Otherwise.” He paused again and then shrugged. “They’re people, and they deserve the same protection of the laws as everyone else.”

“Good enough. Are you up to heading the building inspection for Mutant High?”

Dave’s head came back. “You’re telling me it’s not a fable?”

“On the other side of the mountains.”

“There’s nothing in the files that even comes close.”

“Dave, Dave. You of all people should know better. You put as many fake reports in the file as everyone else combined.”

Dave rolled his eyes. “Politicians.”

“Yeah. This isn’t a whorehouse, though.”

“Well, someone’s got to do it. Where are they hiding it?”

“Whateley Academy.”

“Whateley. Academy. Hm. That’s Mutant High?” He steepled his hands for a moment. “Lots of things suddenly make sense.”

“I’ll bet. This is a Joint Accreditation Visit. Get everything done in one pass. Jeb always said the team they send up from the Pentagon is real pros. Pain in the ass, but still pros. You served in Desert Storm, that’ll help with them. It’s the teachers from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges that usually have shell shock.”

Dave grinned. “I’ll bet. So Jeb was doing it before? Did he leave any notes?”

"...while the State of New Hampshire has no intention of adopting the South Florida Building Code, upgrading to compliant roofing, roof to foundation structural connection, and windows stands a good chance of becoming cost-effective over time."

Dave Steel knew his reason for being here was an exercise in creative writing, and most of the school was over-engineered compared to code, but thanks to his kids he'd seen "The Sorceror's Apprentice" countless times. Just the thought of roofing slates coming off in high winds reminded him that this place was way too close to Dunwich to rule out worst cases.

"Mister Steel," Elizabeth Carson chose her words carefully here, "while our students may be quite exceptional, our funding is less so."

"I'm sure of it, but the risk of loss from one conjured hurricane?"

One of the school's maintenance supervisors looked to Mrs. Carson and mouthed "Thunderstorms in the bathroom."

"However, in view of renovations being considered you make an excellent and timely point."

23 September 2015
Melissa Samson rolled her eyes for the umpteenth time this month at the 'rumor' about Caitlin Bardue. She actually knew the truth - she had vague memories of 'uncle' Erik Mahren, and knew 'aunt' Cait was the same person - but she warmed up to once more trot out the cover story Daddy and Uncle Mike (even she had trouble telling them apart sometimes) said to use...

Earth Mother, 1977 wrote: "Now we will be starting by teaching you how to make and use a wand. As you will find when you do your homework, there are different correspondences for different materials, just as there are different approaches to magic. The school store either carries or can order any of a number of suitable materials, so you are encouraged to experiment."

"Dude! I have the wildest idea: why not use a chemically altered substance?"
"Because you're an idiot?"

Caduceus, 2007 wrote: "Now we will be starting by teaching you how to make and use a wand. Because of past incidents involving nitrocellulose and lathes, we require that you use natural wood for this assignment. The school store carries the most commonly used woods: oak, thorn, ash (which we recommend for a general-purpose wand.) However, other woods can be ordered, such as ebony or rowan, or gathered from the wild.

"I've got just the thing!"
"I knew we should have searched your backpack more thoroughly."

Miss Grimes, 2017 wrote: "Now we will be starting by teaching you how to make and use a wand, using one of these blanks. By which I mean, one of these blanks for each enrolled student in this class."

Smoky huffed at the indignity. HE was a dragon! SHE - well, she probably could kick his scaly butt.

"As you will find when you do your homework, there are different correspondences for different materials, but we will start with Ash as we are going to make a more general-purpose wand. In years past, the Department used to allow students more leeway in their choices,"

"Miss Grimes, what was the problem with that? Harry Potter's wand was made from holly."

Her right eye twitched at the mention of That One, but she said, calmly, "Holly is a good good choice for many wand uses. It also costs three to six times as much as comparable oak or ash. The reason we now supply ash wand blanks is not to spite Ms. Rowling, but because we do not care to support further destruction of Yggdrasil."

This one hasn't been sitting on my system quite as long as the last one, but it's also going nowhere. The excerpt I'm showing is stroking one of my pet peeves: the design of Arena 99. It might be early enough to redesign it for Gen 2. If anyone has any interest, I'd be willing to say a bit more of what I've been thinking.

- - -

Sted "Ponygirl" Lancaster sat in the Arena Stands, looking idly at the huge screen on the front wall. The screen went wall to wall and ceiling to the floor of the stage, covering the wall completely. It was one unit, built from a technology that made the latest display screens from the big manufacturers whimper from a sense of abject inadequacy. It wasn't that there was anything impossible, well, except maybe the quantum dot light emitters, it was just that it wasn't possible for anyone to fabricate a screen that big, with the backing electronics that could maintain a smooth 120 frames per second.

While the screen itself was a pure gadget - it obeyed the laws of nature - the technology that built it was equally pure devise. She knew how it worked: that was part of her talent, and she could build the devises that could repair this screen or build an equivalent screen. What she didn't have down yet was the ability to do it directly, using the telekenetic abilities that let her make gems and small parts just by holding the raw material between her hands. Making *that* work was proving to be inordinately difficult.

Arena 99, of course, was not behind the screen. It was underground, over a mile away, and connected via the tunnel system. Arena 99 had invisible cameras that the human director, or cis backup AI, could manuver so the action would appear on the screen. It had to have something like that - the Arena was simply too big for a fixed viewpoint to be able to follow the action.

*That* technology was something that Sted didn't understand. At all. Probably a good thing, too. If that kind of surveilance technology escaped....

She shook her head. In the last combat final, the two idiots had decided to fight it out between themselves before trying to rescue the hostages, with the predictable result: the hostages got killed and the perps escaped, leaving the building a smoking ruin.

The screen cleared to show various scenes around Whateley. Boring. Then it cleared again to show two numbers: 418 and 632. 418 was the number she'd been assigned. She decided to throw the bookies a bit of a problem and went invisible as she got up from where she'd been hovering, almost as if she was sitting. She floated down to the door to the waiting area.

. . .

Another door opened, and Gunny Bardue entered. He glared at the two students, as if their mere existence meant they'd inevitably screw up and earn his wrath, and he was getting an early start on that wrath.

"Listen up! A terrorist group called Storm Cloud hit Mutual Life a couple of hours ago. For a change, the local police SWAT unit was on the ball, and they've holed up in the upper floors of the Mutual Life building, with a gaggle of the corporation's executives and workers as hostages. Your job is to free the hostages. Whether or not you eliminate the terrorists at the same time doesn't matter, although the prosecutors would like a few warm bodies to persecute.

"Any questions?"

Sted cocked her head slightly. "What else do we know? Are the perps baselines, what kind of power set do they have, what does the SWAT team know?"

Gunny grinned. "They've got a projective empath and a fire manifestor. Beyond that the usual: AK-47s and other mayhem machines. Pony, you've got door 1."

She walked toward door 1 and entered the teleport booth. A moment later she found herself in the Arena.

Dec 2006

As they crossed the state line into Illinois on their way back to Missouri, Louie and Lloyd both felt that they could relax again for the first time since this insanity began. Just how The Reynard had known where they kept that accursed rock, and how to get at it without setting off any of their wards, remains a mystery; what wasn't a mystery was what he planned to do with it. They found the damned fox just a mile outside of Cincy and making a beeline towards that convention.

Looking down at the box now handcuffed to his arm, Lloyd frowned. Word had gotten out about the debacle at the convention center that afternoon. If that fruitcake had gotten her hands on the Star of the South, there was no telling what horrors might have been unleashed. They had the Sly One bottled up tight, but how many others were going to come looking for that thing, hoping to restore it through that oddball's power?

Friday morning, September 1, 2007,
Office of Dr. Bellows, Doyle Medical Center, Whateley Academy

Before coming to Whateley Academy, Kris would have considered it an insult to be placed in 'English 101'. His advisor, Dr. Alfred Bellows, explained that it was the regular course for freshmen, emphasizing that the other students were, technically speaking, native speakers.

"Perhaps this will help you understand." Dr. Bellows walked over to several shelves of books, picked one up, and opened it to a well-memorized page. "It's a song that many of your fellow students will have come across in middle school or grade school." He handed the book to Kristian. "Please read this and tell me what it means."



At first, Kristian wasn't even sure if all of it was in English. After his third attempt at reading the text, he still wasn't sure. "Errrr. It's describing spring out in the country? But I don't get what it has to do with singing... cuckoos, in the summer?"

"Would it help if I told you that when this was written, 'summer' referred to the time from planting to harvest, or roughly from May Day to All Saints Day? Cuckoos were often heard in late April and May, so they could be seen as a sign of summer."

"That still doesn't help out much, no."

"Then let's try the regular course and see how it goes, shall we?"

"I, er, think I see your point."

Dr. Bellows smiled. "I'll send you a copy to translate at your leisure. You might find it more interesting than it looks. By the way, if you start falling behind, please let me know so we can arrange for a tutor. Freshman English has as high a demand for good tutors as some math courses.

Monday morning, November 5, 2007,
Crystal Hall, Whateley Academy

"Hey, Kris! How's English class treating you?"

Mads was rarely this cheerful in the morning without reasons for which Kristian didn't want to be implicated as an accomplice.

"Better than certain freshmen I could name, why?"

The lunatic grinned at that. Considering that he was the freshman in mind... "I heard you hadn't finished an assignment, and thought you could use a little help! Here ya go!"

Mads laid a torn-out notebook page face-down on the cafeteria table, and walked off. That wasn't suspicious at all.



4^th Period, English I,
Schuster Hall

Kris was still working on a translation to English at the start of fourth period. He had the words, or thought he had them, but he couldn't reconcile the modern to the old. There were a few minutes left before class started, so he asked Abbie for help.

"Um, Kris, why are you trying to translate 'Summer is a-coming in'?"

"Would you believe my counselor is involved?"

"Just how far did you get in Boy Scouts before coming here?"

"Why do people keep asking me that?"

Mrs. Devlin walked up from behind the two students. "Might I see what's so interesting? Who knows, I might even be able to shed some light on the subject."

Abbie's face turned a light pink as she handed the paper to their teacher, even though she'd learned the song in grade school (or thought she did!)

"Mister Holm. Miss Elliott was asking that question because she was, I'd wager, thirty seconds from a detention for lewd language."

"What? Lewd? But that's... I meant. What did I mean?"

"I suspect you were going to attempt to explain a usage for a certain verb of motion that is known to date to the 17th century poem "Walking In A Meadowe Greene". Given the play on a well-known Latin homonym, and the similarity of origin and themes, the pun may date to the thirteenth century or earlier. Suffice it to say that we will not be discussing these things in this class."

Monday evening, November 5, 2007,
Crystal Hall, Whateley Academy

Kristian slammed down his notebook next to Metro's meal substitute. "What the hell is this poem supposed to be about?"

"You've heard of 'the birds and the bees', right?"

"How does a cuckoo have anything to do with that?"

"You see, even though a momma bird may love a pappa bird very much that doesn't guarantee that all of her needs are met when summer haying rolls around. So there are some birds that give other birds the bird (or, perhaps, a hand if not a fist) in ploughing a well-tilled and fertile field. Nine months later a stork flies by with a parcel addressed to occupant."

The verbal input wasn't computing, but empathy is very handy at picking up intent. Metro's mind could be dirty enough for two people without this much self-provocation.

"I think I hate you very much right now."

“We have Rollers coming up on our 40!” ‘Danny’ reported. ‘Miss Scarlet’ didn’t have her minions answer to numbers or ‘theme’ names, as some supervillains did. She felt it depersonalized them more than it hid their identities. So she assigned them cover names, and they were Ace, Bill, Charley- through Hank.

Miss Scarlet adjusted her trademark red cloud so that it billowed over the wheeled security drones, and then started potting them with her BFG. “How’s the Vault coming, Eddie?”

“We have 127 out of 184 combinations cracked,” Eddie replied as he monitored the computerized codebreaker. “Another five minutes, but we can kiss a clean swipe goodbye.”

“That’s already blown,” she pointed out. “George, how’s our exit holding?”

“We have Armed Security on our back porch, and I’m getting chatter that we can expect someone from the White Hat community soon.”

“Three minutes would be better!” Miss Scarlet snapped to Eddie as she shifted her BFG, so that instead of blasting the ‘rollers’, it disrupted them. She used that setting to shut down the drones that crowded the choke point. That kept the ones behind them from simply advancing over the blasted wrecks and blocked the choke points.

But, she mused as she shut down the rest of the drones, it also blocked them from using that as a means of exit as well. Once she’d fried the rest, Miss Scarlet let her BFG cool a bit. Then she switched over and loaded a slug the size of a spray can. As the slug charged up to ‘critical risk’ levels, she checked her smartphone for the floorplans of the lab and the Engineer’s notes. She picked one option and marked a spot on one wall with an X in grease pencil. She stepped back, and just as the BFG was beginning its ‘critical overload’ alarm, let off a blast. The blast knocked a large hole in the wall. “Well, Eddie?” she asked as she, Bob and Danny knocked loose bits from the edge of the hole.

“I have Six… Five… Four… Three… Two… BINGO!” The combination released the final catch on the last restraining bolt, and the vault opened.

“Why is it so cold?” Bob asked. “I thought this was an Engineering place, not Biowar stuff!”

“It is,” Miss Scarlet said as she pulled a solenoid-driven pry-vice from her red overcoat. She went unerringly to one drawer and opened it with a bang and a crack. “These are next-step liquid crystal AI cores. Before their core imprinting is done, they have to remain frozen.” She used insulated tongs to lift a dull white box that suspiciously resembled a quart of ice cream from the drawer. She put the box in one of the thermal ‘lunch box’ containers they brought. She expertly removed eight more boxes, stashed them in containers and handed them off.

She finished, had the boys get ready and radioed, “Ace, we are GO.”

With that, Miss Scarlet led her men through the hole, bypassing three Security checkpoints, a small army of Security guards, and more RC hardpoints than she cared to think about. As they moved, she prepped another slug, but not to critical risk levels again, and blasted open a pair of heavy armored security doors.
Past those doors, they rushed across an open stretch of concrete that offered absolutely no cover. But then they were pinned down by a beam of bright green light from above. “HALT, EVIL-DOERS!” blared a high feminine voice. “Surrender, or face the power of the Green Beacon!” Floating maybe fifteen feet above the ground was a trim young girl in a shades of green bodysuit with white gloves, boots and belt. She had clear crystalline bracers on her wrists, with matching visor and belt buckle. Her straight green hair was cut in a ‘bowl’ pageboy with bangs, and her lips were painted green.
*****

“’Halt Evildoers’?” Viv echoed hours later in the debrief room of the lair under the Harrow homestead. “’Surrender, or face the power of the Green Beacon’?”

“What are you complaining about?” Jessie asked as she pulled off her green polyester wig. “Thanks to me, Next Horizon’s™ Security put out an ‘answered’ bleat to their ‘Code Kent’ alert. Even so, Kid Galahad turned up. If I hadn’t been there, someone competent might have shown.”

“Yeah, the Kid seems to have decided that you’re his Catwoman, Sis,” JD said. “He was not happy that I got between him and your getaway vehicle.” He massaged the bruise on his chin.

“Oh, like you two were there to help me,” Viv grumped.

“What are you kvetching about?” Jessie demanded. “You got to blast me through a window!”

“What was I supposed to do, with you floating right in front of that window like a sitting duck?” Then a thought occurred to Viv. “That was deliberate. What were you up to?”

With a smirk, Jessie reached behind her and pulled a 3-inch diskette that Vivian recognized as the latest mass-market 3 Terabyte external data storage drive. “Next Horizon’s emergency backup disk for their superconductor experiments.”

JD gave Jessie a challenging grin and produced a shoebox-sized and shaped container. “The testing prototype for that very superconductor.”

Luke leaned over the table at the drive and prototype with ‘Mad Science’ greed showing through the eyeholes of his mask. “Annnddd… how much are you asking for these?”

Vivian scowled and gave out a low groan like an annoyed cat.

“What’s the matter, honey?” Nick asked his oldest daughter. “So JD and Jessie walked out of it with something. So what? Each of those frozen AI cores is worth an easy 50K on the Black Market, and you bagged NINE of them! That’s almost a half million. Even after operating expenses-”

Viv fell forward and buried her face in her crossed arms. “My fences are low-balling me,” she grumbled through her arms. “They say there was a mysterious rash of ‘break-ins’,” she made air quotes to denote the dubiousness of the claim, “in Silicon Valley, Denver, Cincinnati and Durham. Suddenly, AI cores are a drug on the market.”

Luke started to make a comment about not hearing anything about it, but he was shut down by a sharp look from his brother. It was a pathetically transparent example of fences driving down prices, once the object in question had been stolen.

“Still, you ran a very competent raid,” Nick said consolingly. “None of your men were hurt, let alone captured, you got in and out without any blood-shed and you accomplished your goal. And to be honest, you didn’t really need Jessie to show up; you could have handled Kid Galahad in your sleep.”

“Operating expenses ate up most of my profit,” Viv groused. “That new escape vehicle chewed up most of it.”

“Maybe, but it was money well spent,” Luke said. “A Vortexian™ VTOL airship with Stealth, Silent Running, a 6-missile rack, an AI auto-pilot and a screen generator for your trademark red mist. And you’re grooming a very good squad of henchmen, dear.”

“Yeah….” Viv picked up her head, still glowering. “But I’m not having any FUN.”

“hah?”

“I’m not having any FUN!” Viv repeated herself. “I mean, JD is having the time of his life running around being all spooky and grabbing everything valuable that isn’t welded to the floor. Jay-jay is having fun doing super-powered cosplay, and pulling off sneaky little grabs. You? You’re having fun as a criminal little league coach.”

“Pop Warner supervillainy…” JD mused.

“Pony League Smash & Grab!” Jessie countered.

JD was about to top that, when his father quashed that with a stern *ahem!*

“I mean, what’s the POINT of being a supervillain, if it’s just a JOB?” Viv asked rhetorically. “I don’t have a big social or political point to make, I can probably make just as much money psychically insider trading on the Stock Market if it’s just money, and as for power? Hell, I could get more tangible power by marrying into Old Money and running my husband’s political career for him. So, if I’m not having fun, then what’s the point?”

“You’re worrying too much, Viv,” Luke said with an avuncular pat on the shoulder. “It just means that you haven’t found your ‘voice’ yet. Let’s face it, you have a feel for supervillainy. Like Nick said, even without JD and Jessie butting in, you could have handled Kid Galahad with one hand tied behind your back. You’re learning, you’re developing a good store of gear, and your men actually trust and respect you. It would be a shame if you punked out now. You just have to find out what works for YOU.

“Heck, I remember my first couple of operations as ‘Cyber-Spider’,” Luke let out a laugh of mixed amusement and embarrassment. “Not only were they absolute debacles, but even when I managed to pull it off, I was just so frustrated! It turned out that I was trying to copy Nick’s ‘sneaky master criminal’ act, instead of going with my strong suit- Trained Engineering Logic. HE thinks in oblique convoluted tangles that rely on completely baffling his opponents; I just problem-solve. Figure out what tool is needed for the job, and get it there.”

Nick gave his brother a glower for the less than flattering description of his operating technique, but let it slide. “Luke’s right about one thing, Hon: you just need to find your own special style. Once you’ve got that figured out, the rest will come. And you’re right about something too, Viv- if it ain’t fun, then why are you doing it? In the immortal words of Henry Gondorff: ‘There’s no sense in being a grifter, if it’s the same as being a citizen.’”
*****

Viv listened to Madison whine on about what Emily said to Sarah, and it was all she could do to not throw the phone across the room. WHY was putting up with this? She didn’t CARE what was happening at that stupid medium-rate private school for the middle-management losers of tomorrow! Before she figured out how Jake had been playing her, this had been meat and drink to her. Now, it was like her old Barbie™ dolls; she rarely even looked at them. But she still had to go to school to keep her grades up so she wouldn’t be stuck with the retards when she went to Whateley next year.

Then she noticed something that was only slightly less annoying. Asha was standing there with her doll, Musette, clutched to her chest. She was bouncing on the balls of her feet slightly, and her eyes were sparkling. Which meant that she had some choice information she was looking to sell.

Viv thought about it for a moment. On one hand, Asha was even more annoying than Madison. On the other hand, she might actually have something useful to tell her. And she couldn’t just pick it out of her head; Asha was her sister, after all. Worse, Asha was sharp enough to know it, and would rat her out to Mom in a second. Besides, she could always get back to Madison; what Asha had might not stay fresh that long. “Madison? Gotta go. Family stuff. Lates!” she cut the connection and looked at Asha. “So, Squirt? What’s the deal?”

Viv didn’t need to probe Asha to hear the ‘I know something I won’t tell’ chant going on in her mind, the little spore was practically podcasting it. “Well, I was playing in Jay-jay’s new wagon-”

“Y’know, Mom doesn’t like it when you do that,” Viv reproved her annoying kid sister. “They still haven’t taken care of all of Akelarre’s security wards, and the old goat was so sneaky, she could have something really nasty still waiting to-”

Asha cut off her sister with a ‘who do you think you’re kidding?’ look. “Anyway, Jay-jay was working on a big heist, a big ol’ power jewel or somethin’, but Mom said she hadda put it off, ‘cause of some magical training thing, and Mom’s all ‘discipline this, discipline that’.”

A magical power jewel? “What kind of jewel? How big?” It was cutting it very close to poaching someone else’s score, but JJ had been one-upping her every step of the way ever since that stupid birthday fiasco. Viv needed to pull off something right under JJ’s nose, just to put the little weirdo back in her place. And a magical jewel was almost automatically worth 100 times than a stone of the same size and clarity.

Asha mimed holding a stone between thumb and forefinger, about 3 inches apart. Woof! No wonder JJ was interested in it! If Viv could swipe that stone, not only could she sell it for enough to pay for Whateley and a sports car, but she’d be one up on JJ- where she belonged.

The negotiation was long and hard. Asha was only six years old, but by that very virtue, she regarded the world as hers by right, and that big people were getting in the way of it. Asha wanted to be able to use JJ’s wagon as a playhouse; she settled for Viv’s Barbies.
*****

Asha also provided JJ’s notes and research on the Heart of Azdaja; well, it wasn’t like Viv was ever going to use that Barbie™ Dreamhouse or sports car again anyway…

Though losing the Fab Fashion Accessory Closet hurt…

JJ’s target was a super-sorcerer known as ‘the Gatewarden’.

Ugh. And Mom wondered why Viv passed on the whole magic scene.

At any rate, besides a doohickey called ‘the Key of Cinvat’, which was supposed to be major, the Gatewarden’s big deal was an amulet that had the ‘Heart of Azdaja’- Viv wondered what it was, that all these big deal mythological beings were always leaving their eyes and hearts and hands and other parts of their anatomy lying around where mages could work them into amulets?- a large blue stone. The Gatewarden as supposed to be a super-sorcerer, which meant that he was powerful, but old school mages like Mom and Gran’Pere got up on their Old Money horses and looked down at him like he was nouveau riche or something.
He was probably pretty dishy- if you were into old guys who ran around in silk pajamas .

According to JJ’s notes, the Gatewarden got his nom de guerre because he styled himself as the guardian or ‘warden’ of some kind of mystical ‘gate’ that was under his house. The picture of the house looked like a backup location for an ‘Addams Family’ movie. Obviously that ‘key’ he had was supposed to be for that gate. Viv wasn’t sure how and she didn’t really want to know.

Nobody in the area messed with the Gatewarden. Viv wasn’t sure whether that was because he could tap into the power of the gate, or they didn’t want to keep him from standing guard on whatever was on the other side of that gate. So trying to take the key was stone-cold out.

But the Heart of Whoever was totes a whole other matter. The Heart buffed the Gatewarden’s ability to scry and sense and see through illusions, and all like that. Basically it was a Hi-Def, Max-Rez Directional Radar dish for magic. He wouldn’t be as kickass without it, but he could still do the job. Which struck Viv as cutting it a mite thin, but if JJ thought it was okay, and Mom agreed, so what?

The bitch really was getting the Gatewarden off his turf with all the protections and gargoyles and wards and crap, where he was so badass. The trick was going to be getting him out of that Munsters-knockoff house, while he was still carrying the Heart with him. Viv grinned evilly. Fortunately, if JJ’s notes were right, she wouldn’t have any problems with that.
*****

“Are you sure about this?” Mr. Fixit asked as they peered around the gloom. The Halliwell Refuge for the Troubled had been a product of a very nasty period in the history of Mental Health provision in America, and it had an equally nasty local reputation. But then, most abandoned insane asylums do.

“No,” the Silver Sorceress admitted. “But if we’re going to find a whole unbound dynamorph to power your new Effects Generator, we’ve got to explore the possibilities.”

“Yeah,” Maxiwoman grunted with annoyance as she panned her flashlight across the dusty corridor. “No offense, Stan, I know you’re doing your best with what we got, but the rigs we’ve got now manage to be very straining and still manage to be lame. I can barely punch through a cinderblock wall with this.”

“Right,” Captain Intrepid said. “But why are we doing the ‘Scooby-Doo’ shtick? What’s with the flashlights? Why don’t we just turn on the power?”

“According to our source, the mysterious lights have only been seen at this hour,” the Silver Sorceress answered. “A bunch of paranormal phenomena is photophobic- that is, it doesn’t like light- so looking for them during the daylight would be counterproductive.”

“Okay, then why am _I_ here?” Guiding Light asked nervously.

“Because if whatever the lights are are photophobic- and hostile- you’ll be our ace-in-the-hole,” Moonbeam explained.

“Besides, Major Speed is a-scared of the dark,” Maxiwoman sneered.

“And there’s the fact that the property management company wouldn’t give us permission to search the place,” the Silver Sorceress pointed out. “At least not unless we signed over all rights to anything we find,” she added sourly.

“You mean we’re here illegally?” Guiding Light squeaked.

“It will only be an issue if we find anything,” Maxiwoman assured her.

“And as for the darkness,” Mr. Fixit cut in, “this place hasn’t been maintained or repaired since that nasty incident in 1980. Between vandals, water damage and vermin-” he fixed a scuttling rat with the beam of his flashlight. “- if they turned on the power, odds are the most it would do is start an electrical fire.” He peered at the tricorder-like packet in his hand. “I’m getting a reading.”

“Is it Life- but not as we know it?” Captain Intrepid quipped.

Mr. Fixit put his flashlight away and focused on his ‘tricorder’. He swung the packet around and finally said, “From the input I’m getting from the sensors we planted as we searched, I’d say that the phenomenon was on the Third Floor, in the East Wing, and heading North… towards… the Chapel…”

“But…” Guiding Light whispered, “that’s… where the 1980 incident happened!”

Captain Intrepid took his cell phone from his ear. “Speed just called. He said he saw lights. Third Floor. East Wing. Heading North.” Through the half-mask of his hood, you could see his expression saying, ‘this is what we came here for.’

“Okay!” Moonbeam snapped. “But if 1960s bubblegum pop starts playing, I’m leaving with Shaggy and Scooby!”
*****

Dim lights shone through the stained glass insets beside and built into the heavy wooden double doors to the infamous chapel. There was decades’ worth of graffiti everywhere and the ‘Police Scene’ tape was still there, but the lock and heavy chain lay at the sill of the doors.

Mr. Fixit pointed his ‘tricorder’ at the door. “It’s in there, whatever it is. Okay People, power up.” With a mental command, servos and components unfolded from his backpack and configured themselves into a high-tech instrument- though more slowly and stiffly than his old rig had. The others also hit their triggers, though they paid a lot more attention to the charge and time threshold indicators than they had with their old rigs.

“Hold it,” the Silver Sorceress said, pulling out her cell phone. “If it’s a dynamorph, we’re good- but if it’s not, we should have some backup ready.”

“You don’t mean HIM,” Guiding Light said with a tone of dismay.

“He brought us into this thing in the first place,” the Silver Sorceress reminded them.

“But he’s so obnoxious!” Maxiwoman groaned.

“If it’s supernatural, he brings the big guns into the fight,” Cap pointed out.

Mr. Fixit screwed up his face with inner conflict, clearly having a ‘being the leader stinks’ moment. Finally, he said in a cold, flat dead voice, “Make the call.”

The Silver Sorceress made the call, cut a deal, and 15 minutes later, she said, “He’s good.”

Mr. Fixit gave Captain Intrepid the go-ahead, and Cap kicked in the doors, knocking them off their hinges.

A soft eerie light filled the desecrated chapel, casting a creepy pall on the pews, regalia, icons- and decades old bloodstains. The light came from a pair of shiny brass oil lamps that hung in the air a good three feet off the floor.

“Is… it a dynamorph?” Guiding Light asked, poking her head in the door. “Or… something else?”

“How would _I_ know?” the Silver Sorceress asked back. “I only play a witch on TV!”

“It’s… reading… something,” Mr. Fixit admitted as he fiddled with the ‘tricorder’. “Just not bands or patterns that I’ve identified for dynamorphs.”

“Oh, this is just pathetic!” Maxiwoman groaned. She strode forward, her cap flowing behind her. She strutted up to the two lamps and sneered back at her confreres, “Big brave superheroes.” She gripped the lamps, on in each hand, and they came free. She turned and showed the lamps to the others with a ‘see, that wasn’t so hard’ smirk.

“Thanks Babe,” growled a low raspy male voice with a noticeable accent. “It would’a really screwed me over if I’d broken those free of their plat myself. But since yer mundane, it worked like a charm.”

Maxiwoman looked through the doors and saw behind the Sensational Seven a group of men and women in oddly tricked out biker denims. And that was the last she saw of that, as the doors slammed shut in her face.

As the Sensational Seven (less one) turned, the speaker stepped forward from the pack with the mien of a leader. There were ten of them, six men and four women. Most of them wore biker’s mixture of leather and denim, with a lot of strapped on bits of plate armor. Most of them bared their arms, as to display a lot of ritual scars in the patterns of Futhark runes, and they’d just cut themselves on one or more of the runes, as they were bleeding. The bleeding did nothing to diminish the eager gleam on anticipated battle on their faces. Here and there, one or more of the runes, either on the scars or on the bits of armor glowed red. The sole exception was a tall strapping blonde woman in a leather duster over a leather halter top and leather trousers. She showed no scars, though her golden eyes burned with a different power.

The leader wore a ‘viking’ helmet with wings at the temple and a mask like face guard. One eye was covered by an eye patch. He wore a steel gauntlet on his right hand, which carried an over-elaborate battle axe. More red runes glowed with power on his eye patch, gauntlet, paldron, belt buckle, cross-belt, and on the blade of that axe. He also bled from the scars on his arms, and the joy of expected bloodshed shone in his eyes. He was as Metal as you could get without a grinding electric guitar riff. “Good Even,” he said through his grin, “I am SKJAEREN, the BLOOD VIKING, and these are my Berserks.”

“WHY are you telling us this?” the Silver Sorceress asked.

“Because it’s part of the ritual of combat to announce yourself to the gits yer gonna kill,” Skjaeren said. “And the working I’m to do now requires the blood of heroes. But heroes are thin on the ground at the best of times, so you media whores will have t’do.”

With a barbaric yawp of vicious glee, the Berserks launched themselves at the Seven. Moonbeam managed to spoil their opening move by decreasing their mass to the point where their leaps carried them up to the ceiling, where they hit their heads and came crashing to the ground. But that was pretty much it for the ‘Sensational’ Seven. Skjaeren cut into Captain Intrepid with his rune-axe. The blade sliced through the composite metal ‘I’ logo on the captain’s chest and cut through the body armor under it, but all the blood it raised on his chest was a gash. Which was more damage than the Cap had taken in years. But Cap toughed it out and punched Skjaeren-
-to almost no effect.

The rest of the Seven were taking it in the chops. The Berserks completely ignored the Silver Sorceress’ illusions (if not their PK effects), and the Sorceress found herself on the end of a nasty beating. She threw subtlety aside and concentrated on erecting a wall of PK force between her and the snarling heathen. With that brief respite, she pulled out her cell phone and hit speed dial. “GET HERE!” she snarled into the phone as the force wall was battered down.

As the Silver Sorceress put all of her focus into avoiding the Berserk trying to wail on her- for all his strength and speed, his technique was sloppy- a light erupted from the brooch that clipped her silvery hooded cloak shut. The beam of light ‘melted’ a hole in the very air, and a portal formed there. A spherical glass flask with a different color liquid in each hemisphere came out of the hole and broke among the combatants. The liquids bubbled and produced a thick vapor that stung the noses, eyes and throats of both sides.

Then, with a lusty roar, a very large man wearing what looked like a mix of football padding and combat armor (with his lower face protected by a breather mask) charged from the portal swinging a metal-capped baseball bat. He added the force of his charge into his swing as he brought the bat across the small of Skjaeren’s back.

Just behind him came a lithe woman in combat leathers with rows of tubes strapped to her biceps, thighs and shoulders, carrying an odd looking pistol in her left hand and a gleaming crystal dagger in another. She also wore goggles and a breather mask. She aimed her pistol at the Berserk who was giving Moonbeam a drubbing and fire, sending a spray at the thug. He was covered by the mist. The vapor cleared, and immediately the man fell down giggling uncontrollably. She ‘broke’ the pistol like a breach-loading shotgun, removed two tubes and replaced them with two from her rows of reloads.

The blonde woman in leathers pushed her fellow Berserks aside and glowered at the pistoleer. There was an instant recognition, that they were both dynamic forceful women unafraid of violence. They were too much alike to be anything but the best of friends or the deadliest of enemies.
And there was no way those two were going to be friends.

Bringing up the rear, brandishing a staff with an elaborate clockwork instrument at the head, came an athletic man in his prime. Besides the goggles and breather as the first two, we wore a long leather ‘lab coat’ with rows of tubes strapped to his shoulders, sleeves and thighs, as the woman did, and he had an ornate ‘badge’ pinned to his chest and a large square-cut red crystal dangled from a chain as a pendant. Looking around, taking the Berserks’ measure, he slipped a liquid filled tube from one of the loops on his sleeve and fit it into a niche on the clockwork doohickey. He brandished it, sending a roiling stream of strange unearthly energy at Skjaeren, who was still mixing it up with the big man.

Skjaeren turned to face him. The big man tried to take advantage of that, but he fell under five of the Berserks as they dogpiled on him.

After tense facedown, the woman with the pistol holstered it, shifted the crystal dagger to her good hand and set herself. Then on some unspoken agreement, they launched themselves at each other.

The fight went on with the alchemist slugging it out with Skjaeren, the pistol-woman scrapping with the leather-blonde, the big man trying to get out from under the five Berserks, and the three remaining female Berserks keeping the Sensational Seven from getting their wind back. Maxiwoman was unable to join the fray, despite beating on the doors with fists that should have been able to batter down a cinder-block wall.

Finally, Skjaeren snapped, “ULRIKE! Enough of this shit! Get them and GO!”

The golden-eyed blonde broke from her catfight with the pistol-woman, letting the three female Berserks handle her. With a frustrated snarl, she stalked over to doors to the chapel and kicked them in. She marched in on a startled Maxiwoman, and the doors shut behind them.

The man with the staff switched out tubes on his staff, and a snarling demonic appearing figure flowed out of the staff. The horrific figure oozed towards the doors of the desecrated chapel and tore them off their hinges. The blonde, Ulrike, stood there with the two lamps in her hands. Maxiwoman lay unconscious on the floor behind her. The vaporous fiend snatched the two lamps from Ulrike’s hands as she stood there startled.

But Skjaeren gave a blood-curdling scream, leap and sundered the manifestation with his rune-axe. He picked up the lamps and tossed one to Ulrike. “Cha-cha! Go Long! Ulrike! Make Tracks!” Ulrike and one of the female Berserks charged down the hallway. Skjaeren cocked the lamp as though he was going to pass it like a football. But when he threw, the man with the staff gestured with it, and a light appeared around the lamp in midair. It floated to his hands, and his two companions put themselves between the Berserks and him. “This isn’t over, Gatewarden!” Skjaeren snarled. He pulled a knife from his belt and cut one of the scar-runes on his biceps. On that cue, the remaining Berserks did likewise, and then in formation, they ran down the hallway, disappearing as they ran.

The Gatewarden looked at the groggy Silver Sorceress and said, “I’ll get in touch with you as regards our payment. Aslan, Demetra, let’s go.” The three turned and retreated back into the portal.

A battered Guiding Light groaned, “We’re never gonna live this down…”
*****

As they stepped through the Eastern Gate of the Bridge of Cinvat, Aslan asked the Gatewarden, “So, Boss, why did you send those losers, the Simpering Seven, to investigate that place?”

“Because it might have been a dynamorph,” the Gatewarden answered as he removed his mask. “The Halliwell Asylum’s dark reputation vastly exceeds its reality. The only reason that pile hasn’t been bulldozed is its remote location. There are the usual rumors as to Indian burial grounds, sites of massacres, strange beasts and so on, but they’re all just campfire stories. The readings that occurred near that place were probably flukes, but the odds were a lot better that it might be an eccentric dynamorph than anything supernatural.” He looked at the lamp in his hand. “Which begs the question: if Skjaeren arranged that to break these out of a plat, but didn’t want to risk it himself- then exactly what ARE these, and how did they establish that plat?”

“Plat?” Aslan asked as he shucked out of his armor. His English was very good for someone who spoke Turkish as his mother tongue, but English was always coming up with new words to spring on him.

“A ‘plat’ is an archaic term for a plan or design,” the Gravewarden answered. “In Metaphysical circles, it’s used as a term for the cyclical patterns that some ghosts and other repetitive phenomena develop. You can break the pattern and disrupt the plat, but it’s dangerous, and even more dangerous for the magically active.”

“Any idea who that tow-headed bitch ‘Ulrike’ was?” Demetra asked as she checked the nasty rends the subject of her question had torn in her armor. “I don’t remember her running with Skjaeren’s crew, and she’s a step above the rest of his Berserks.”

The Gatewarden pulled out his cell phone and went to an online resource that, among other things, had a ‘Mystic Offenders’ database. “I think I have a hit. Last Christmas, the California Crusaders raided the estate of a cult called ‘the Wolves of Ragnarok’. While the leader, Lykarax, and most of the rest of the cult were captured, one of the four who escaped was listed as ‘Ulrike’. She’s wanted in California for Grand Larceny, Aggravated Assault, Kidnapping and Fraud, and the Police departments there would like to ask her some pointed questions about some people who’ve disappeared without a trace. And Dimi? The Wolves of Ragnarok practiced a form of lycanthropy.”

Demetra just gave a stark smile. “So? That just means that I don’t have to hold back, the next time we run into each other.”

“No, it means that you’re going to the infirmary right NOW, and rub some essence of St. Hubert’s Root into each and every scratch you got.”

“You mean you’re not going to help me with the hard to reach places?” Demetra asked coquettishly.

“ah, No, I’m going to take this to the lab, and analyze it,” the Gatewarden hefted the lamp and carefully backed away. “Oh, and Aslan, don’t forget to do your acidity tests.”

“Can’t it wait until after a nice hot bath?”

“Aslan, we need to keep track of what those elixirs are doing to your metabolism,” the Gatewarden said, sounding far too much like a dentist reminding a patient to floss. “To do that, we need fresh data.”

As Demetra slinked off to the infirmary, Aslan wondered how sincere the Greek woman’s flirtations were. But either way, he thought that the Gatewarden was wise to play at being oblivious. Greek legends were rife with the horrors that Greek women visited on their men. And Turkish rumors were full of similar terrors.
After he finished stowing his armor in his locker, Aslan joined the Gatewarden in the main lab. The main lab was an awkward blend of SOTA, ‘steampunk’ and ancient technologies, with the main features being an ‘alembic’ which did strange things to the nasty critters that seemed to be magnetically drawn to the house, and three large brass ovens that the Russian called ‘athanors’. Aslan didn’t know what they did, and he didn’t really want to know what they did. All that he knew was that the Gatewarden captured vile critters, boiled them down, and made useful potions out of ifrit sent by Iblis to torment the world.

With a martyred grunt Aslan settled himself onto the couch. The Gatewarden affixed chemical exposure strips to various parts of his body. The hard part was waiting the two hours for the strips to be saturated. By that time, both the elixir he’d taken to bolster his strength and protect his body would have worn off- and so would the adrenaline that kept him from feeling the beating he’d taken. When the two hours were over, he’d NEED that hot bath- and a massive aspirin.

The Gatewarden clamped the lamp into a vise that was connected to an array of things that included lenses, mirrors, prisms, lights electrical and otherwise, and fiddled with it for the better part of an hour. Aslan was getting that sour taste in his mouth that said to him that the elixir was wearing off, and for another hour, he would wish to only be massively bored. Demetra had finished touching up her wounds and had changed. She was watching the Gatewarden with the muted curiosity of a lay person watching a trained professional do some esoteric work. Aslan was considering asking the Greek woman to get him a book or something to read to take his mind off it, when there was the sound of a crash from upstairs.

Aslan struggled to get off the couch but wound up falling on the floor instead. Which did not suit the bruises that suddenly were letting themselves be known. Demetra scrambled through the labs’ stores to find some crystal daggers. She fumbled around a bit, but managed to collect a fan of them in each hand. The Gatewarden was hurriedly trying to pull his leather longcoat on while still holding onto his staff and scrambling around for his badge at the same time. Then the door to the lab came crashing in.

The Gatewarden, Demetra and Aslan did their best to prepare themselves and faced-
-a wall of guns. “Guns?” the Gatewarden yelped, “Why would anyone who could get through our wards use Guns?”

“Well, you know us Amurricans,” Skjaeren sneered in a bad faux-American accent over the barrel of a Mac 10 machine pistol, “we just luuuve us our bang-bang toys.”

“Sides,” one of his Berserks, who was wielding a sawed-off shotgun, said in a genuine American voice, “if it works, it works.”

“Every mage worth his seal knows at least three anti-bullet spells,” the Gatewarden warned them, even as he delicately braced to put his badge between himself and a barrage of gunfire.

“And _I_ know a charm that will let prepared bullets slip right past those spells,” Skjaeren jeered back.

“ENOUGH of this!” Ulrike snarled as she shoved her way through the doorway past the Berserks. She had Mrs. Bezhukov in front of her in the classic hostage grip, with one arm twisted painfully behind her back. She had a prosaic snub-nose set against the woman’s jaw. “You can keep your toys, you can save Mrs. Hudson here, or you stay alive. But you can’t do all THREE.”

“You’re going to kill us all anyway, so we might as well take a few of your with us,” Demetra said, hefting a crystal blade.

“CHILL,” Skjaeren said. “Odin’s Blood, and women are always ragging on MEN! We’re not here to take the Gate or do a blood working. We’re just here for a simple rip-off. Ripper, Tommy-boy, look for the cultured crystals he’s been flogging. Cha-cha, Huldre, Foxy, find the balms and elixirs. Hoss, Torch, Slats, pack up the genies in their bottles; I got plans for those.”

The Berserks shoved Aslan, Demetra and the Gatewarden to separate corners of the lab, and they kicked the Key of Cinvat in the fourth corner. Skjaeren took the Heart of Azdaja from the Gatewarden with no small amount of personal satisfaction. They quickly ransacked the lab, though for some reason, Skjaeren was keen on them not doing any damage. When they had a crate of crystals, two crates of liquids, and three crates of the ‘genies’, Skjaeren told them they had enough. “No sense in slowin’ ourselves down with too much swag,” he said.

“Well then,” Tommy-boy said with a big nasty grin, “there’s no sense in leaving unfinished business.” He ratcheted a bullet into his Uzi and got set.

“NO,” Skjaeren said firmly. “We ain’t getting’ paid to off ‘em. And I got firm religious convictions against doing dirty work fer FREE.”

“Okay, but what about Little Miss Badass here?” Cha-cha asked, shoving her SMG into Demetra’s ribs. “She’s been giving Ulrike the evil eye ever since we walked in. And Ulrike’s been spoiling to finish that fight they started back at the nuthouse. Why not let them finish it, and be done with it?”

“Cha-cha…” Ulrike purred through a feral grin, her amber eyes dancing. “I knew there was a reason I liked you…”

Demetra returned the feral grin, her near-black sloe eyes also merry with the thought of mayhem. “As you Americans say, ‘Bring It.’”

“We’re in the middle of a RAID!” Skjaren barked.

“C’mon, Skej, we got ‘em cold!” Hoss laughed. “Think about it, a good old-fashioned chick fight!”

“Better!” Torch said with a big grin, “A Macho Chick fight! All the crunch of a Guy fight and all the nasty of a Chick fight!”

“We’re in the MIDDLE of something here!”

“C’mon, Skjaeren!” Huldre jeered, “Let’s see if the Wolf-Bitch is good for more’n how she fills out her pants!”

Skjaeren was massively conflicted: on one hand, simple common sense said to get out fast without any fucking around. On the other hand, sometimes you got to give the dogs their bones, or they get snappish. And, well, he wouldn’t have gotten into this whole scene if this sort of thing didn’t appeal to him on a primal level. “All Right! Handcuff the Chem Wonk to one of his ovens, and the big goof to that standpipe! Ulrike, let’s see you live up to your woof!”
Demetra pulled her arm free from Foxy and snatched up a beryl dagger from the crate. She spun the glittering blade in her hand and gave Ulrike the ‘come and get it’ gesture. Ulrike charged right at her, completely ignoring the gash the blade cut. And from there it was two very tough women letting it all hang out as the Berserks cheered them on.

The brawl was equally matched: Demetra was faster and had better technique, but Ulrike was tougher and she was fighting through the cuts she took. Ulrike was bloody but game, but Demetra was taking lumps and slowing down. Ulrike smeared some of her own blood on her face to make a rune, grinned savagely, and took control of the fight. Then a small missile flew between them, embedding itself in one of the tables. It opened like an umbrella and gave out a yodeling wail that was like an icepick in everyone’s ears. The rest reeled, but Ulrike fell to her knees, her hands over her ears in a vain attempt to shut out the din.
Four more missiles came from the door. Two of them opened up into more sonic weapons. The other to also opened up, but into rough spikes. They emitted short-lived but powerful magnetic pulses that drew everything ferrous that weighed less than 15 pounds to it, including (especially) the Berserks’ guns and knives. Skjaeren’s great axe slowly moved out of its holster on his belt, but he managed to keep a hold on it. Not this Mac-10, but at least he had his axe.
The screamers stopped and Ulrike turned to the door with a lupine snarl of fury. She was immediately knocked back into one of the athanors by a blast from an energy weapon. As the Berserks turned to the door, a woman in a wide red hat, matching long coat and scarf mask entered the room with the energy weapon in question drawn. She was immediately followed into the room by men carrying polearms that crackled with energy at the tips- and spray bottles. The woman in red shifted the configuration of her weapon and fired snares at Skjaeren, Ulrike and Demetra, wrapping them tightly. The Berserks charged at the men in red, but the newcomers sprayed them with the bottles. And then they laid down a beating on the Berserks with the polearms.

As the Berserks recoiled from their attackers, the woman in red said in a cultured contralto, “Skjaeren. I thought we had a deal.”

“Dammit, Scarlet, I need the Heart!”

“That wasn’t our deal,” Miss Scarlet said severely. “I set up the Halliwell sting, you set the hook, we make the raid together. I get the Heart of Azdaja, you get the rest. That was our deal.”

“What’s IN those bottles?” Slats demanded, noting how weak he felt.

“Holy Water,” Miss Scarlet answered smugly. “Blessed by a Priest who’s proven that he has the mandate, and cut with 6 drams of water from the Grotto at Lourdes. More than enough to wash away your blood magic. And without your blood magic, you ‘Berserks’ are just pissy.” Then she turned to her men. “Grab the crates with the crystals and the liquids. But leave the three crates with the brass bottles. They’re nothing but trouble. If the Blob Viking here wants them, he can have them.”
Then she went over to Skjaeren and took the Heart of Azdaja from his belt. “I’m getting what I wanted anyway. If you’d played square with me, you’d have walked away with all the crates. Stinks being a rat, doesn’t it?”

Skjaeren’s only reply was to kick Miss Scarlet with both his feet, sending her tumbling back. Having cut through the snare with the edge of his axe while his men were getting beaten up, Skjaeren burst out of his bonds. He hefted his axe and gave an ear-splitting scream. But he didn’t charge Miss Scarlet’s Redcoats. Instead, he hacked away at the ‘brass’ bottles in the crate, splitting them open. Roiling vaporous figures came screaming out of the broken bottles, zipping around the room and launching themselves at the various players.

“Oh crap,” Miss Scarlet said in a very small voice.

“No!” the Gatewarden yelled, “You can’t let those unclean spirits escape before I have a chance to process them into something safe and useful!”

“Not to worry!” Skjaeren laughed heartily. “I have just the thing!” He pulled a white, metal rimmed horn from his belt, put it to his lips and blew it loudly. The wraiths swirled around Skjaeren, shrieking like a storm.

“What are you doing?” the Gatewarden demanded, pulling at his shackle.

Skjaeren said nothing but blew a tantara that slid into a complex melody. The wraiths concentrated themselves, merging and melding into a single swirling entity with multiple whip-like tendrils extending from a central body. Miss Scarlet, suddenly regretting all those lessons in the Occult she’d blown off, made a total ass-pull guess, and fired a nerve-stunning blast at the Blood Viking. If Skjaeren could command that thing, a rampaging uncontrolled whatever-that-was would actually an improvement. It would probably go after Skjaeren and her Berserks.

Unfortunately, the amalgam-spook blocked the blast, and Skjaeren gave Miss Scarlet a nasty grin.

Demetra took advantage of this to completely disengage from Ulrike and dove for the corner where the Gatewarden’s staff had been tossed. Exploiting the fact that everyone was paying more attention to the evolution of the spirit-mass than what was going on on the floor, she kicked the Key over to the Gatewarden. The Gatewarden snagged the staff and immediately used it to free his cuffed hand.

Skjaeren blew another tantara, and the spook-mass congealed even more. Miss Scarlet got the distinct impression that Skjaeren was forcing some pattern or concept on the mass, trying to mold it into something that suited him better. Lacking any better ideas, she fired bolts at Skjaeren, to the same general lack of effect.
Shifting the horn to his off hand, Skjaeren drew a long thin knife. The spook reached out and grabbed Miss Scarlet and her Redcoats, pulling them off their feet, and drawing them closer. Vivian’s panicked telepathic probing of Skjaeren gave her the distinct impression that he needed blood to complete his mastery of that creature- and he didn’t intend to get that blood from anyone on his side.

Vivian prepped her multi-gun for another setting, though she was just doing that to cover the fact that she was about to lay a psychic smackdown on Skjaeren that would- should- might cause him to lose control of the spook.

But then the room was filled with blinding light. “HALT EVIL-DOER!” came a high soprano voice backed by a trilling that gave her pronouncement the tone of a heavenly proclamation. “Though choked in Sin, those ones are as pure as the driven snow compared to your own evil! I am the LIGHTBRINGER, and I shall shatter the darkness!”

The dazzling brilliance dimmed a little, to allow the sight of a slender young girl with her golden hair done in an elaborate hairstyle, wearing white robes trimmed with gold, carrying a golden lantern on a long pole. She gestured slightly with the pole, and a beam of light shot out of the lantern, striking Skjaeren and knocking him back.
The Berserks reacted to that, but their attack posture was broken when the semi-complete spook went even more berserk. It immediately grabbed Slats and Tommy-boy. Cha-cha and Huldre just barely managed to avoid being grabbed. Ulrike looked around, took in the fact that the Gatewarden was free and was in the process of liberating Aslan, that Demetra was digging around in the crate of elixirs looking for… something, and the weird bright chick was waving her lantern around, making a strange symbol in the air. That last bit did it for Ulrike, and she lit out the door as quickly as her enhanced speed would take her.

Miss Scarlet shifted her blaster to a photon barrage setting and zapped the spook, making it drop her and two of her guys. Then she shifted to the stunner setting again and zapped Skjaeren before he could get up. Then she shifted back to the photon barrage setting and was about to liberate the rest of her guys. Then there was a massive explosion, and the near-demon dropped everyone in reaction. Looking where the blast came from, it turned out that one of the athanors had exploded for some reason. “Boys, our score is a done deal; let’s not push our luck going for pocket change.” There was a general consensus that this was only good sense, and they exited through the door as Miss Scarlet covered their retreat.

Aslan and Demetra tore into the un-buffed Berserks. The Gatewarden did something with the Key of Cinvat that ensnared the mega-spook. Once he had it securely, the Lightbringer forced her lantern into the center mass of the mega-spook. The mega-spook bucked and writhed, but the power of the Key of Cinvat kept it in place. After much fishing about, the Lightbringer drew out her lantern, which was wreathed in coruscating energies. The mega- spook sort of fell apart, dissolving into smaller wraiths that sort of petered out. She gingerly held the lantern as the Gatewarden and Aslan wrestled a barrel-like canister under the lantern. When it was ready, the Lightbringer carefully lowered it into the barrel. Aslan and Demetra barely had time to slap the halves of the lid of the cistern shut before the liquid in the cask before the liquids reached some sort of boiling point. When the boiling died down enough, the Lightbringer pulled her lantern out. It shone brighter, but it was a controlled light.

The Lightbringer cooed, and turned her nubile young charms on the Gatewarden. “Oh thank you! I’ve been waiting for so long to get to know you! I’ve admired…” Then she stopped. “Skjaeren! He got away somehow! We’ve got to-”

“Yes,” Demetra cut her off through a feline smile, “I’m sure that it’s very, very thrilling, but we have a horrible mess to clean up, and we DO have to find those hoodlums, all of them.” She firmly gripped the Lightbringer by her shoulders and turned the girl around. Nattering away in strictly polite words, but letting it be plainly clear that the Lightbringer wasn’t welcome in her parlor, Demetra walked the girl out of the laboratory.

Aslan and the Gatewarden exchanged uneasy looks. Several minutes later, Demetra came back and fixed the Gatewarden with the annoyed look that every girlfriend and wife has down pat. Aslan carefully stepped away from the confrontation.
*****

Later that night, a figure in a long tan duster with a black Stetson waited on a landing on a nearby river. After waiting a while, the bizarre figure of a large black swan appeared on the river and came toward him. It pulled up to the landing and the head and neck of the ‘swan’ lowered to the edge. The wings unfurled to reveal three women, one in a red longcoat with a matching wide-brimmed hat, other in a long black dress with a headdress styled to resemble a swan’s head, and a girl in white robes with gold trim. In front of them was a table.

Cardsharp stepped onto the swanboat and favored the ladies with a genial smile. “Well, good evening, ladies! It looks like I’m gonna have to find some other way from Skjaeren to pay to get his rune stones back. Man, you have no idea how annoying it is to listen to 6’4”, 220 pounds of badass blubber like a little girl!”

The three women said nothing. The woman in red lifted her hand, displaying a large square-cute red stone on a gold chain.

“Huh,” Cardsharp grunted. “There’s no manners anymore, no ‘howya don’, how’re the wife and kids’; it’s all rush, rush, keep it business…” He reached into the Gladstone bag he was carrying, and pulled out a familiar white horn. He placed the horn on the table. The three women gave him an ‘and?’ look. With an aggrieved sigh, Cardsharp reached into his bag and produced a bundle of $100 bills. At the three women’s prompting, he produced another. And another. And another. And another, until he put $80,000 on the table. Then the woman in black gripped the side of the table and turned it so that the Heart of Azdaja was on his side, and the horn and cash.

Cardsharp picked up the jewel and said pleasantly, “Well, it’s been a slice, what with your lively and witty conversation.” He turned and walked off the boat, wasting no time as the ‘swan’ pulled itself together and floated off.
*****

“Why did Jessie get half of my cut?” Viv demanded as the three of them entered Mara’s concealed tower.

“You know why,” Mara told her oldest daughter sternly.

“I see that you’re all still alive,” Gran’pere said heartily, looking up from the stacks of books on the table that he was picking through. “How did it go?”

“What are you doing here?” Viv asked, “I thought that men weren’t allowed in the tower?”

“Your Gran’pere is an exception to many rules,” Mara said.

Gran’pere nudged little Asha, who was only still up at this late hour because her grandfather had a hard time saying ‘no’ to her, awake. “So, what happened?” Asha asked.

“It went off more or less as expected,” Jessie said, holding up the ivory horn that Cardsharp had traded.

“What IS that thing, anyway?” Viv asked, taking off her ‘Miss Scarlet’ hat and coat. “How did Cardsharp get it away from Skjaeren?”

“It’s the Horrid Horn of the Darkling Hoard,” Mara said. “It’s a rather routine olifant-”

“Olifant?” Vivian, who’d grown up hearing the legends of the paladins of Charlemagne repeated. “Roland’s horn?”

“Not quite,” de Maugris corrected his grandchild. “An ‘olifant’ is a rather generic term for a hunting horn made from an ivory tusk. It was rather chic for noblemen of the 9th Century to carry one. However, Roland was known to have been carrying an olifant at Roncevaux, and fanciful tales of Roland’s prowess sprang up, including a bit of nonsense about his horn only sounding at battle and so on. In time, ‘Olifant’ became a term for a device to call and command trooping spirits.”

"Remember, Jessie," Mara told her daughter and apprentice, "The idea is to use the horn to study how it works, not to use it as a crutch, relying on its power instead of developing your own skills in Conjury."

de Maugris waved the trivia aside. “Now for the important issue- did it work?”

Jessie held out the lamp from its pole with a big grin. “Like a charm. It didn’t go down quite as planned- the Gravewarden didn’t have a chance to pull off his big ‘whoops’, but Skjaeren was kind enough to try and whip up his own Wild Hunt with a bunch of the Warden’s captive ‘djinn’. He tried to merge them into a big mega-spook, and he just had a Heart Monad formed when I stepped in.”

“And the Rose you seeded the lantern with?”

“Fully restored,” Jessie assured him. “And there’s enough of the Heart Monad still intact that we should be able to jumpstart your athanor.”

Du Maugris gave a wicked chuckle and sprang from the table. He hurried over to a large brass assembly built around a bronze cylinder surrounded on four points by bronze statues of women in Classic Greek dress holding forth goblets. As du Maugris opened a hatch in the cylinder and started fiddling with something inside, Jessie took the pole and settled the lantern in the ‘Mercy Seat’ between the two kneeling ‘Seraphim’ on the replica ‘Ark of the Covenant’ that was one of the arks that she’d taken from Akellare. Electricity arced from the winds of the two angels. When the electricity stopped sparking, Jessie held her hands forth as though beckoning. A glowing rose of purple energy rose up from the lantern. Jessie took it into herself, as though inhaling it.

“Et viola!” du Maugris cried, stepping back from the athanor. Jessie gingerly lifted the lantern from its place on the Mercy Seat, carried it over to the athanor and carefully inserted the lantern into the hatch. Stepping back, Jessie let her grandfather fuss over the athanor, saying things in Classical Greek as he waved his hands, pouring liquids over it and generally being mysterious as all get out for the better part of a half-hour. Then the athanor glowed hot, and he pulled the lantern out. “More than enough for my purposes, my dear,” he assured Jessie as he handed her the pole.

“Okay, yet again, I’m the only one who doesn’t know what’s going on,” Vivian said with a scowl. “Exactly what did you guys sucker me into?”

“Nothing,” Mara said serenely. “YOU inserted yourself unasked and uninformed into a delicate magical working, one you exempted yourself from by your refusal to take up the family traditions in the Mystic Arts. We simply made sure that your interference didn’t upset our plans.”

“Vivian…” du Maugris started. Then he stopped, visibly though it over and started over. “Vivian, for foundation, you understand that the reason for the Gatewarden’s nom de guerre is that he acts as the guardian for some mystic gate, protecting the world from vile spirits that reside on the other side?” Viv nodded. “Well, that’s complete and utter tripe.

“The Gatewarden’s estate is NOT built on an extradimensional gate, nor are there vicious demons waiting on the other side to enter this world. Rather, that hideous house was built by a vile mystic at a junction, a place where multiple streams of Vis, or the flow of mystical energy, which were contaminated by miasma joined. That mystic constructed a cistern under the house which gathered and concentrated it, for… some purpose I’m all-too-willing to ignore.

“The Gatewarden is a super-sorcerer, which means that for some reason, he is able to wield fantastic amounts of magical energy and ignore the consequences, which is why more conventional mystics, such as your mother and myself find them so noxious. However, while they can ignore them, they are not entirely immune to them.

“When the Gatewarden exerts his magical powers, like all magicians, it causes an equal and opposite reaction, to borrow a phrase from the Englishman Newton. In the Gatewarden’s case, it reacts with the cistern of miasma beneath his house, which he taps into for his alchemical quests. The reaction takes the form of noxious miasmic spirits, which the Gatewarden has the decency to regard as his responsibility. Of course, there is the fact that when he captures one of these ‘ifrit’ as he styles them, he boils them down to form crystals and balms and elixirs and so on.”

“So, basically, he’s recycling toxic magical waste,” Vivian summed it up. “Then why did you steal one of his athanors, which I’m guessing he used to pull all that off.”

“Not HIS athanor, Vivian,” du Maugris said heavily. “MY Athanor.” He reached over with cane and tapped a coat of arms worked into the bronze. Vivian looked closely, and sure enough, it was the du Maugris coat, three cups separated by a chevron. “I designed and constructed this is 1836, under the strictest Virgilian standards. I all but refined the plaster and wax for the molds myself. I cultivated the roses of power within for over a hundred years. Then circumstances forced me to leave it behind when I fled France for Brazil in 1940. For decades, I mourned it as lost.

“Then, ten or so years ago, I learned that it still existed, passed from hand to hand, and somehow it wound up in the custody of the mystic who owned that property before the Gatewarden. I have been scheming for years to find a way to recover this.”

“What? Why didn’t you just go in and take it?”

“Well, beside the fact that the Gatewarden’s estate is heavily warded- though I do admit that your way past those wards was very clever, well done, Vivian!- the Gatewarden performs a valuable service for the region. He cleans up a nasty mess that most mundane are completely unaware of. But the magical community is well aware of it. I couldn’t afford to act against the Gatewarden in a way that would antagonize both sides of the magical community.”

“Then… why did you go after it now?” Viv asked.

“The benefits of working with novices; they don’t know what can’t be done, so they try the impossible. And sometimes, they succeed.

“Jessica learned of the Gatewarden, and concocted a scheme to simultaneously renew one of the roses she won from Akellare, and create a counter-balance to her efforts by martyring the Warden’s reliquary.”

“HAH?” Viv bleated “Renew her roses? Counter-balance her what by martyring her what?”

Du Maugris gave his daughter a sere look and muttered, “It may have been for the best that she declined her instruction.” He let out a breath. “When Jessica bested Akellare, the witch thought she had four arks of power to draw on, and a tap on your mother’s power. So, she drew ruthlessly to achieve her various effects quickly, when normally, she would have been far more circumspect. So, when Jessica took the roses of power from Akellare, she gained a respectable 26 roses of power. Unfortunately, of those 26, only five are still viable. The others are… intact, but shriven of power. They will need to be restored.

“Jessica’s plan was to trigger a balancing reaction by tricking the Gatewarden into overextending his power, and so creating one of the ‘demons’ that plagues him so. Jessica would then insert that lantern, which had one of her roses of power embedded in it, and fuse the rose with its Heart Monad, which is the primary stable pattern of magic energy within a spirit.

“That done, she would create a connection with the Gravewarden’s Ark, his primary reserve of power, which was intimately connected to his series of athanors, by touching it with that lantern. When the connection was sound, she would return here, and touch one of her own arks,” he gestured at the ‘Ark of the Covenant’. “Thus creating a connection between the two. So when, the Gravewarden commits one of his blunders, the force of the balance will feed raw essence to Jessica’s arks, while the counter-balance feeds the stored miasma from her various workings into the Gravewarden’s system, particularly that cistern I spoke of. The ‘martyr’ term comes from the unsupportable habit of foisting miasma off on one’s neighbors, effectively making them martyrs to your mystical ambitions.”

“That means that every time the Gatewarden screws up, instead of created a faux-demon that might escape and eviscerate someone,” Jessie clarified it for her sisters, “that power gets shunted over to one of my arks, after being cleaned of all the miasmic icky. And the miasma that my magic will create gets shuttled over by the balancing effect into the Gatewarden’s cistern of crap. That means that he won’t be creating as many cultured power gems or elixirs from the creeps he’s been accidentally creating, but considering the damage that one of the *ahem!* ‘demons’ that do escape the Gatewarden’s estate do, I’d say that we have the Greater Good on our side on this one.”

“Which means that in a few months, these will be worth far more on the Gray Market,” Mara said, opening a crate, picking up a handful of crystals and letting them spill through her fingers.

“Where did you get those, Mom?” Viv asked, recognizing the crate and the crystals from that scene only a few hours before in the Gatewarden’s lab.

“Oh, Johnny got them out under the cover of your red mist,” Mara explained carelessly. “Along with a crate of elixirs and that athanor.”

“HOW?” Viv demanded, feeling yet another eclipsing bearing down on her. “Come to think of it, how did he carry that athanor out of there? That thing must weight a TON!”

“Don’t be melodramatic,” du Maugris sniffed. “It only weighs 753.22 kilos.”

“AND?”

du Maugris kited Vivian a look of tried patience. “The same way I got the athanor into this tower.” He pulled Iron Ox’s superstrength talisman belt out from under the table and shoved it in Viv’s direction.

“Oh, I also borrowed Guiding Light’s light-generator bracers, for those ‘light spells’. They really knocked Skjaeren and this Bozo-ks for a loop, and they never caught on.” Jessie removed those bracers from her wrists. “Mom said it was okay.”

Viv bristled and said, “I would have done better, but there as a bunch of stuff-” Viv stopped short and snarled at Asha. “You ratted me out! You told them what I was doing!”

“You should thank her-”

“AFTER you set me up to fail by selling me incomplete information! I gave you all my Barbies, the Dream House, the Sports Car AND the Fab Fashion Closet- when you stiffed me on the information!”

Asha, despite the late hour was suddenly wide-eyed awaken. Clutching Musette to her chest, Asha looked around, and for the first time in her life, neither Mommy nor Gran’pere were offering any protection. Not needing ESP to sense a spanking coming her way, Asha let out a steam whistle scream of fear and sprinted out of the chamber.

Vivian was immediately on her heels, vengeance gleaming in her eyes.

du Maguris started to rise to Asha’s defense, but Mara stopped him. “NO, Papa. They have to learn. This is the best way for Viv to learn that she shouldn’t hijack Jessie’s projects- especially when Magic is concerned- and Asha needs to learn to provide value when she deals with Family, and not sell incomplete information."

Mrs. Ryan watched over her normally-sleepy Saturday Costume Shop II class, giving helping hints here and there about construction techniques, the necessity of including felled seams in lieu of overlock stitching for long-term comfort in skin-tight costumes, and even the occasional advice concerning aesthetics, often to the surprise of her charges given her current personal taste. She was helping a male student grasp the basics of overstitching runes into the interfacing of his punk-styled leather jacket when an argument erupted on the other side of the classroom. This happened at least once a year, and Mrs. Ryan had learned that such feuds needed to be hashed out on their own until they became a distraction to the entire class. Most ended without her intervention, but she made sure that the ones that did were always used as a lesson for the entire class. Christiana Medeiros and Wendy Navarro were the primaries, with Meredith Langstrom being incapable of the grace to recuse herself until she ended up complicit as well.

"That sash is sexist and soooo ancient," Christiana instigated the imbroglio by harshly criticizing Miss Navarro's choice in accenting, "My armored jumpsuit is practical, has better protection, and easily accessible pouches on the belt."

"Sexist?!" Miss Navarro spurted. "Sashes are classy and feminine! Yours is practical? It's trivial for someone to grapple you with that monster belt. The buttons on the sleeves do nothing, and besides, if you want to look ugly, that's your prerogative!"

"The sash is kinda dated Wendy, and it clearly doesn't obey the laws of physics," added Meredith, unsolicited.

Mrs. Ryan had stepped away from her other charge and his leather jacket to loom behind the three bickering girls, which had the added benefit of temporarily keeping the rest of the class out of the fray. Miss Narvarro's dark-hued, form-fitting suit showed off the girl's natural curves, with a brightly contrasting flowing sash that seemed determined to spread along her waist as much as the opposing knot would allow rather than gather as physics and nature intended. As one of the tech students, it seemed odd that she would forgo any type of storage, but she allegedly already had an, "extremely durable," satchel that she carried just behind one of her hips. Practical, flat-soled wrestler boots rounded out the ensemble. Mrs. Ryan had approved of the design during the first few classes, despite her unspoken reservations about lacking a cohesive styling.

"You're not even a flyer! The sash does nothing for you. And I don't know anyone in my Flying class who would wear one either," Christiana had started to elevate the volume of their discussion. "And oh, BY THE WAY, I am not going to get thrown, you know I'm an Exemplar 4 on my MID!"

Wendy Navarro audibly scoffed. "Never underestimate the power of charm on a street thug. All they'll see with you is a butch wannabe 'Grrl Power' cliché, which makes you a big target in their eyes…and By. The. Way, obeying physics is for freshthing devisors."

Mrs. Ryan mentally reviewed the armored jumpsuit of Miss Medeiros. The way she had arrayed the plating within was quite clever, but while the costume was fitted, it was in no way flattering. She had also advised against the decorative buttons that Miss Navarro had called out earlier, but, that was Miss Medeiros' choice. Settings for false power gems, gadgets, etc. were all somewhat better choices. With her above-average exemplar rating, the buttons were unlikely to become force concentrators when blocking with the forearms, so at least they weren't a liability. She had opted for a more overt storage solution approach with the belt, and Miss Navarro might be surprised at how difficult grappling would actually prove in real world applications of close quarter combat with an exemplar and flyer. The costume would serve Miss Medeiros well in the Junior's combat finals this year.

The three girls had gone back and forth over the perceived flaws of the two costumes before the rapid fire criticism finally shifted to Miss Langstrom's project. Something about her being a constant tripping hazard to herself. The costume was rather plain, particularly for a magic track student, currently a monochromatic faux-wrap top in undyed Kevra, and a multi-layered skirt in the same fabric that incorporated a great deal of hidden pockets and holsters for her athame and holdout weapon of choice. She had given quite a few comments to Miss Langstrom about how to prevent the three layers of material in the skirt from entangling her legs, and relieving at least some of the heft from all the items she elected to carry. The costume was easy to put on and provided a fair amount of protection, but Mrs. Ryan cautioned the young woman about putting all her equipment into a single outfit that she would need to wear all the time. Mrs. Ryan had thought to give Meredith a short lesson on how to add pockets to any skirt, but had yet to find the time. Perhaps she would pull her aside at the end of this class.

The irony of the first two girls now berating the third was that Miss Langstrom had actually bridged the gap between aesthetics and practicality. As the first of the hair-pulling began, Mrs. Ryan briskly swooped toward the trio to intervene. The lesson to the class would be about providing, and also accepting, constructive criticism. One of her particular favorites for exactly this scenario…

There was a knock on the door of Nichole Reilly's teachers village apartment. The Sidhe woman glanced around her still not quite organized abode and sighed.

“Toni, I said I'd call when I'm ready for...” She said as she whisked open the door. Standing on her door step was not the expected hyperactive Ki master, but Dr. Wyatt Cody. Something about his stance and the eyes told her that the being before her was not the man she had known through Elain Nally, but a being far older. “.. a house warming party. Kodiak, what do I owe the pleasure?

“I'm worried about something you might have inherited from The Queen Who Was.” The Bear rumbled.

Nikki nodded slowly and stepped back. “Well come in, something tells me this isn't something to talk about on the doorstep.”

“Thank you.” he said stepping over the threshold. “This is something I've wanted to talk to you about since... well since I first realized who's daughter you where.”

Nikki raised an eyebrow. “What is so special about who's daughter I am?”

“Well, as Aunghadhail's daughter...” He saw the redhead blanch and he slipped his hand under her elbow as the new teacher staggered. “She does leave a long shadow.” he rumbled.

“Yes, she does. So, what did she maybe leave me besides the crown?”

The Bear looked off into the past over Nikki's head. “I still feel bound to the oaths I gave her about her privacy, but...” He drew in a breath then let out a huff. “One of her fellow Queen, I had my suspicions but never know for sure, hit her with something that left her sterile.”

Nikki's knees went week, and she likely would have gone down had the Dr.'s big paw of a hand hadn't been there. While unlike the other changelings she hadn't put much thought into kids, and while she enjoyed visiting with her friend's kids, she still hadn't put much thought into it. With her long life ahead of her she'd thought she'd have time, but now...

The Bear could read her emotions as they played across her face. “Don't assume the worst until I check you out.”

“Ok.” Nikki said in a small voice.

“We can do this here in private.” he added as he pulled a stool up to a comfortable looking chair.

“Do I need to undress?” Nikki asked, and both Wyatt an the Kodiak where amused by the blush that colored the former model's cheeks. The Bear allowed his amusement to creep out as a gruff chuckle. “Age has only made you easier on the eyes, but no it isn't require.” His nose twitched. He could smell the teacher's... he wasn't sure what Nikki considered the lesser fey as now. Back in their schooldays she'd been a handmaiden doing what Nikki had wanted, or not. Koehnes was lurking somewhere close at hand and he turned, saying into the air. “As long as you don't do anything as foolish as attack me as the Old Queen's guards tried long ago, you may come out and be here for her.”

The spirit crept out of hiding as Nikki sat in the chair and he took the stool. “Give me a moment to weave the spell I need.” He stated as Koehnes took Nikki's hand giving him a fierce but worried look. He took his time with the casting, showing Wyatt as he did so. “You might feel some discomfort... shouldn't be anything worse that what you'd feel from a gyno trip.” He caught her flush of embarrassed red, and he had to hold back a chuckle. Ah the young where so amusing sometimes. The exam was swift and through.

He sat back with a released huff. “You're clear. Nothing magical of natural is going on there. Come the day, you can concise and carry to term.”

“God, you sound like my Mom...”

About 8 months Post Vanishing Day

Konrad Radu looked down on the war torn countryside, and sneered at the troops below. Who did thet think they where, trying to 'reclaim' the lands that his Lord had claimed under his banner. So Paramount was missing, he would return, and he had a strong Right Arm defending the gates until that time, or when the heir came of age.

“Regent, we are over the engagement. The Calvary is seeing that the civilians are clear while the Wolves are harrying the Soviet troops. They are making them chase their tails. Do you wish there to be survivors?” he asked glancing at the projection of a more then a little pregnant Amelia Hartford who was back at the palace fighting on a different battle field; keeping Soviat hackers from turning the Wallatcha Nuclear Power Plant into the next Chernobyl.

“They haven't learned from those we left to carry word of their defeat back to the Cremlin. Make them all disappear.”

“As you command, Regent. It will be my pleasure.” Konrad said with a slight smirk as he lifted his flesh and blood right hand de-cloaking his, and the rest of the airships. It hurt like hell to extend his invisibility ability like that, but from the pause in the action below it was well worth it.

One of the crew, the one manning the ground to air communications called out, “Civilians are clear. Calvary says thanks.”

“Tell them they're welcome, and they're the anvil, we're the hammer. Weapons, trget the rear of the target, drive them into the Calvary. Stalker units, aid in containment. Konrad ordered. Soon the airship cannons where pounding rhythmically. From the ruins of the town the heavy weapon carrying horse breed rose up laying down a rain of lead that ripped through the human troops The Soviat troops didn't last long.

“Ships two through four, land and take on troops. Call in the Relief & Rebuild units, I want this village livable and fortified by the end of the week. They are also tasked with figuring out why the early warning system failed. They should not have been able to get this far.” Konrad growled, part of him regreting he hadn't lead like Paramount; at the head of the ground troops. But Wallachia would be hear when his lord returned.

Even if he died defending it.

Extremely uncomfortable, Cardsharp knelt in front of the mirror and made the evocation. This time, the visage came immediately, eagerly into view. That did not bode well, not at all. Well? she asked, her one blue eye glittering.

Suppressing an aggrieved sigh with all his willpower, Cardsharp held up the Heart of Azdaja. Mabd gave a wide grin of realized hope. The large red crystal shattered on the end of its chain, revealing a smaller green crystal, which floated in the air. After a moment, that crystal shattered as well, revealing a smaller blue crystal. Ah! Mabd sighed, and the blue gem floated into the mirror.

Well Done, My Champion! the Queen of Air and Darkness exulted with an uncharacteristic wide grin, her two blue eyes glittering (even if one was blinking rapidly). A skeletal hand reached out from the mirror and inscribed a new rune on the amulet that served Cardsharp as a belt buckle. Now our Quest begins in earnest! Before, we were fumbling around in the dark. But now, I can actively see where the scattered bits of my soul have been locked away. Soon, I will be able to call upon by servants flung far across the globe. Soon, I will be the Weaver of the Midnight Veil in truth once again!

And for hardly the first time, the Scapegrace Knight wondered what lay at the end of the Forgotten Moonlight Quest.

As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted (Part 3) wrote: Ms. Grimes tapped her fingers on the tabletop. "Morgana is a student here, she is in our care. Any payment will be made by the school on her behalf."

Thulia gave her a long look, then nodded sharply.

"The traditional payment for this service is twelve minutes of passionate cuddling. I will accept it from you on her behalf." She paused for a moment with an expectant look. "I require half up front, of course."

The fabulous Imp had been violently ill every morning for a week. This is Imp-ossible she moaned to herself, still she made an appointment at Doyle medical.
I need to confirm that I'm pregnant, she told the person taking the appointment.
How am I going to tell Chickenhawk that he's going to be a dad, and what is Melissa going to think? Actually she was pretty sure Melissa would be looking forward to teaching her younger sibling all sorts of Mischief!

Mirror yawned as he made his way through the dimly lit hallways of Twain Cottage. The house father Mr. Filbert was out of town on business, putting him and Thuban in charge during the off hours. After checking the sophomore hall, Mirror headed down the freshman hall. Rubbing his tired eyes he spotted a splotch of crimson plastered on the wall just before the bathroom. Carefully opening the door, Mirror spotted a freshman kneeling on the floor with a medkit opened in front of him.

Mirror recognized him as AP, one of the few permitted to leave early to work at Doyle. One of the freshman’s eyes was swollen shut while the other was staring to show signs of the “raccoon eyes”. AP, looked at Mirror while holding a splint between his teeth.

“Jesus, man what happened?” The Cottage fixer asked storming in kneeling looking at AP.

“Naawwthing…” The injured boy growled through the splint he held in his mouth.

“Really because it doesn’t look like nothing.” Mirror stated, before noticing the arm that was bent at an unnatural angle. “AHhhh!!” he screamed in reaction.

AP paid no attention, to him instead turning back to his arm. With a deafening pop, and a gagged squeal from the boy, the arm snapped back into place.

“I think I’m going to puke.” Mirror said while looking at the floor.

“Well there is a toilet and there is a toilet.” AP pointed out while he wrapped the splint around his arm bracing it, and putting it in a makeshift sling.

“Are you in pain?” Mirror asked.

“Only when I breathe.” AP coughed as he fished for something inside the medical kit.

“I’m calling Doyle.” Mirror affirmed.

“Don’t. I’m fine.” AP yapped as he pulled out the Stabil Pen.

“Hey, that is for emergencies!” Mirror asserted.

“I think this counts.” AP snapped, injecting himself with the devisor drug. With a slight breath of relief AP got up from the bathroom floor. Shuffling towards the tunnel elevators.

“HEY, WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING?!” Mirror yelled.

“Doyle.” AP lied though the haze of euphoria he was feeling. “Someone, has to clean that up.”

“Oh, yea…”Mirror looked at the mess in the bathroom. “Hey, you owe me one!” Mirror finished as the drugged boy walked away.

AP however did not go to Doyle. Instead he went to his office deep in the tunnels. There he used his key to open the locked door. Walking in he made a beeline for the chalkboard he kept on the side of the room. At the center were two names both circled and connected by a solid line. Naomi Jaeger and Elizabeth Carson. In the middle of the two names AP drew a third line and circle.

There he scribbled the name of the group that jumped him, and told him to stop searching for his sister. “THE AMAZONS”

Inspired by this video , and with references to some of my earlier micro-scenes

"I think you're being too fucking 'subtle' for your own good," Chris whispered to his fellow deity as she fumed over a colleague's slight. "Do you really think you can outwit Athena? Fuck that noise. If you really are that pissed off, go over there and make her hurt."

Victoria looked at Counterpoint, and behind him his new lackey Centurion, as if they were crazy. Crazier than usual, she amended to herself. "Carson..."

"Shit on Carson! She may be best friends with your former self these days, but she's still mortal. What is she going to do if the two of you get into it? What could she do?"

"I'm no fighter..."

"Oh, but I remember a time when you were, now, don't you? The Spartans quite loved their dear Areia. Surely you can do this for old times' sake? Just like back in the golden days of the Trojan War?"

Cytherea seemed to think this over, then a steely look came into her eyes. Yes, it was far too long since she's really shown her claws...

Hank 3 wrote: Turning to the silently fuming Nikki, so caught up in her own world she hadn't even noticed her friend's departures, Hank stepped close and waited. Ever since Mrs. Carson delivered the news to Nikki, both that Solicitor was suing her and that, far from fighting the suit, the school's response would be to give him her modelling earnings, Nikki had been upset.

~*~

Hank guided Nikki to the Homer Gallery, up to a dusty pile of metal bars. Hank stopped, staring down sadly at the piled gold bars. "It's only money Nikki,” he repeated softly. “Yes, it's your money, but still." Turning he looked to Nikki, glassy-eyed as he gestured.

“For God's sake you're an ELF not a gold hording Dwarf or Dragon, and I start checking your chin for whiskers or scales.”

Somehow that statement cracked through Nikki's Angry At The World and the red head gave her friend a weak smile.

The Black Mask:

Blue Diamond, the World's Most Loveable Supervillain™, saw a familiar face, but an infrequent patron, eating in a shadowy corner of the supervillain bar as she walked in that evening. It wasn't typical in her M.O. to be so intrusive with her peers. One didn't become the Most Loveable by being nosy. But she couldn't resist! She had recently heard a fantastic rumor from Pinball, and just had to confirm it since the rare chance arose.

She ordered a drink from Carl and sashayed over to her target. While his features may be nondescript, the tricorne hat she leaned near was unmistakable.

"Milady?" he inquired, "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Oh, the pleasure is all mine," she replied before leaning in a little closer. "A little bird told me you recently picked up a pet...a rescue no less."

Instead of responding, Highwayman slid a smartphone partway across the table. The image of little motley white, black, and orange kitten sleeping up against a normal looking pillow on a couch shown on screen.

"Aww...what's its name?"

"I named her Nature," he replied and pocketed the phone.

"Unusual name for a cat..."

"Not at all, milady. Nature abhors the vacuum."

“The diamond? You know the trick where Superman heats up and compresses a lump of coal? That's the result of a Brick being dared to prove they had buns of adamantiam. “ Nichole waited a beat, studying the kids expressions. “Wow, you believed that? I owe Toni a dollar. Seriously, it's cursed, but Doctor Alexander, contained it. Someone figured 'why leave it gathering dust? Let's put it on display.'”

“Is that safe?”

“So long as it doesn't leave school property, yes.”

~*~

“No, I don't know why one of the first students would make a Raisin gun or why anyone would put it on display.”

The FSA evaluating board looked at the two freshmen applicants.
"What are your codenames and powers, guys?"
"I'm Gorm. I have very good senses, can go one week without sleep and don't get distracted easily."
"I'm Feck. I can increase the efficiency of chemical reactions."
"I see. Those are... interesting powers, but not really combat geared. I suppose they would be useful for a watchman or a chemical industry, but as far as superheroing go... sorry, guys."
"Wait, we know our powers are not that impressive, but you really should sign us up."
"Why?"
"Because without us, you will be gormless and feckless."

Melville Cottage, Whateley Academy

Hikaru Myoujin was the very model of decorum as she took the call from Princess Kako. The call had come while she was performing her RA duties, so she'd maintain that decorum if it broke her.

"Hikaru, do you remember me telling you that the IHA would be happy to arrange dates with suitable gentlemen? As it should happen to turn out, the Household has learned of Whateley Academy's traditional Halloween Party. Some feel that it would be a shame to pass up such an opportunity..."


MIT&T, Massachusetts

"... but I'm twenty-four, give-or-take some! Having me escort a fourteen-year-old to her school's dance has to be ten different kinds of wrong."

"Drop your illusion and try saying that with a straight face."

"So I look a little young."

"For pushing forty, I have to say the princess has you beat in the looks department. But you both could stand mingle more, actually risk contact with sunlight and other people, maybe gain a couple of pounds."

"Keep that up, and I'll invite Cousin Brigitte to drop by early."

"See? You two have so much in common!"


Melville Cottage, Whateley Academy

"... What do you mean 'nothing in common', my sweet Okami? I'm told that the young count can turn into big puppy. So adorable!"

"This has already been arranged, hasn't it?"

*It would appear so, Daughter. I admit to being intrigued as to what Kako is planning.*

"We only need to finalize what you're going to wear so he can make suitable arrangements. You don't want to both arrive wearing the same colors! That would be almost as bad as coming as yourself."

*Something cut for dancing, I should think!*

"It's being narrowed down as we speak."

*But to present us as other than us. That presents difficulties.*

*Aren't you on speaking terms with the other Kami?*

*Of course! If it is to be for only one night, sacrifices can be made. I could even bear to wear... I have an idea!"


MIT&T, Massachusetts

"Why now? Rikke, you of all people should know the red-letter tabloids would have a field day with this."

"Because Thomas is off-plane and you mope. When you mope, my only nephew gets sulky."

"But!"

"Because we all know what happens when you get bored and there's no adult supervision. No, the Crown Prince does NOT count except at State affairs! Now, Amaterasu is known to favor red and gold..."

"Blood and money. I can respect that."

"Thank God it's a costume party. Come as you aren't."

"That can be taken in so many ways. Rikke? What aren't you telling me?"


Monday evening, October 31, 2016, Melville Cottage, Whateley Academy

It had taken more work (in the case of onlookers at the salon, tears) than Hikaru had expected, but she managed to get her hair cut, dyed, and styled to fit her chosen role. White shirt trimmed in green, green cargo pants, and sneakers completed the look. Kurenai pitched in by projecting a hard-light disply that hid her own equipment. Whenever she suspected Hikaru to be paying insufficient attention, she added bright green sprites to the display.


Downstairs

Mads grinned and bore the attention of a Security escort to Melville from the Guest House. If he could put up with getting the body and face makeup right ( and the hair! ) he could put up with this. What had completely surprised him was that Thomas had been in the mood to pitch in after getting back early.

Another surprise was that he'd managed to cross the entrance lobby to Concierge's desk before the catty comments drifted to his ears.

"Who does she think she is?"

"More like who was desperate enough to hire her for the evening."

"May I help you?"

Mads choked back the first few suggestions that came to mind, and said < I believe that Myoujin Hikaru is expecting me. >

Well, it looks like the name-drop worked.

< Who should I say is enquiring? >

< Her escort for the evening, of course. >


Hikaru

"My WHAT?"

"'Escort' was the approximate term used."

Hikaru fumed. "I will be there shortly!"


Downstairs

"She will be down here soon."

"I look forward to it."

Both pretended not to here the giggling coming from their observers.


*Daughter. Even when provoked, we do not stomp our way to, our, oh, my.*

Hikaru and Amaterasu had not been expecting their "date" to be wearing a Little Black Dress, halter top, mini-skirt length, paired with black chelsea boots. A simple belt, large silver ankh, and a realistic raven completed the ensemble.

*Do try not to drool*

Mads took in the short brown hair, the green and white clothes, walked over and smiled.

"Ben 10! I've been dying to meet you!"

"It's sort of working, but I'm doing something wrong," Morgana muttered as her hand healed in a burst of orange flame.

Thulia eyed the working critically. "No, everything is in order."

"But it isn't green like yours."

"Oh, that?" said Thulia with a grin. She reached into her pocket and withdrew a pouch of powdered blue crystal. "Just sprinkle this into it."

"Oooh. Magic crystals? They enhance the healing?"

Thulia laughed. "No, silly! Just copper sulfate. It burns the prettiest green."

Tia spun around glaring daggers at the Wondercute girls and Karma. "Stop following me!! I'm not the Easter Bunny, which means I . DO NOT! HIDE! EGGS!"

"I made a bunny that lays colored eggs" Petshop stated proudly. Then she deflated a tad. It doesn't hie them very well though."

"Wait. What? No, no, I don't want drawn into your insanity."

The predator crouched on its perch and surveyed its domain for prey. There, sneaking along the edge of the hallway. The predator set, tensed, twitched its tail and launched itself from its perch. It spread its wings and dodged among the started obstacles, almost losing sight of its target for a moment. But the prey was too sure of its defenses, and wasn’t being wary enough. The predator folded its wings into a power dive and piled into its prey.

A feminine scream filled the corridor of Dunn Hall. “What was that?” someone said. “I heard a girl scream.”

The students watched as the small dragonet furiously wrested with… thin air? After some spirited tumbling around, Smokey seemed to get a mouthful of something and started shaking his head back and forth, like a dog with a pillow. The screaming sound got louder, and students gathered around to figure out what was going on. Then there was an audible snap, and suddenly Smokey had a fuzzy mottled white-and-brown rabbit by the scruff of the neck. The rabbit was still, except for a noticeably weakening twitch of a hind leg.

“Oh,” said one of the older students. “Invisibunny.”

“Invisibunny?” echoed another student. “You mean someone made an invisible bunny? Why would they do that?”

“Because they could.”

“Aren’t we gonna do something about that?” Asked a female student gingerly.

“Why?” asked a boy with an noticeable Australian accent. “They’re invisible rabbits!” he said it with an inflection that suggested that he considered rabbits to be large hopping rats with fluffy tails. “If that little lizard is good for bringing down rabbits… nah, something would go wrong. Something always does…” he gave a sigh for the fact that despite its notoriously vicious wildlife, Australia still had to produce an effective natural predator for rabbits.

Smokey adjusted his grip on the rabbit’s scruff and started to haul the body off. “He’s gonna EAT it?” someone asked.

“Who knows? None of my business, as long as he doesn’t get blood on the floor.”
*****

There was a scratching at the back door of the Crystal Hall kitchens. One of the cooks went to the door and opened it. Smokey was crouched there, the rabbit in front of him, and he was looking up as his tail wagged eagerly. “Oh! You caught another one?” the cook said appreciatively. “And he’s a big one! Well, you’ve earned it, come and get your reward.” The cook picked up the rabbit and carried it to a counter. Smokey pranced after him, clearly anticipating his reward. Setting the rabbit on the counter, the cook lifted up a fresh éclair and placed it on a plate. Then he filled a demitasse cup full of cappuccino and set it on the plate. He set the plate on the floor. Smokey picked up the plate and gingerly carried it out the door.

The cook hefted the dead rabbit and said, “Well, at least we’ll have a steady supply of hasenpfeffer for a while.”

“If that little lizard could get fat, he’d roll,” chuckled another cook.

“But is it okay to cook a bio-devisor’s project?” a third cook asked.

“We’ve tested it,” said the first cook, “and it’s safe so far. Besides, if Smokey didn’t keep their numbers down, they’d breed until they started to threaten the local squirrels. And you do not want to piss off the local squirrels.”

"Hey Mom...is it okay if my girlfriend is comes over tonight? By the way, she can only eat meat."

Out of necessity, some stories go through a LOT of revisions from original concept to what finally gets posted. This is how what ended up as 'The Final Trump' started out.
****

I adjusted the fit of the dress. I looked good in it, if I had to say so myself. And why shouldn’t I? I was gorgeous in a gazelle-slender freshman high school way. There was no way that anyone would ever be able to tell that I’d been born a boy. I turned this way and that, and reveled in it in the privacy of my own bedroom. I was in mid-twirl when Mom barged in without knocking. I reflexively froze. She took one look at I, and a look entered her large, almond-shaped eyes. She drew herself up and declared, “Avery! Look at you in that dress!” She swept me up in her arms in a hug that would have crushed a normal person. “I am just so proud I could BUST!”

What a difference a summer makes. I looked into the mirror and liked what I saw. It was one thing to know that I’d probably turn out to be a mutant- rather a foregone conclusion, what with both Mom and Dad not only being mutants but supervillains. But it was another to realize that instead of weedy facial hair, underarm odor, zits, a voice that broke every five seconds and an Adam’s apple the size of a grapefruit, puberty brought the gift of beauty. And femininity. I smiled at my reflection, and was agreeably impressed. My old boy-face had been… well… serviceable enough. But boy-Avery had had brown eyes and a boy’s face. Now I had eyes that were flashing emeralds set in a visage of feline beauty and grace. I was definitely my mother’s daughter, even if I’d inherited Dad’s control over ectoplasm, instead of Mom’s super-strength, near-invulnerability and flight. But so, I’d gotten the things that really mattered, the face, the hair, the sleek physique, and in time, the great boobs. I was only fifteen, and I could hardly expect to have Mom’s great cleavage- yet.

And it was so good to be able to try on dresses and makeup and experiment with my hair, without sneaking around, worrying that the ‘rents or little brothers would find out! Not that sneaking around hadn’t been fun- and good training.

Mom minutely adjusted the fit of the dress on me, more out a desire to get in that last little molecule of mothering than any sartorial need. “So, have you settled on that for your trip to Whateley?”

I held up one of the other dresses and worried my lower lip, more out of seeing if that bit worked than any real worry. “Yes, I think that this will have to do… Oh, this would be so much easier if I’d had the time to find out what my own personal style is!”

Mom grinned indulgently and chuckled. “It must be nice to think that. Well, what can I say? No more time for any wardrobe changes, we have to go get to the airport!”

“Mom, do you have to come with me?” I asked plaintively. “I mean, I’m fifteen! I can travel by myself!”

Mom patted me on the cheek. “Of course you can, dear. But due to your… change in status… I think that it might be best if I went along to make sure that everything is taken care of.”

“errr… Mom, if by ‘change in status’ you’re talking about my sex change, they’re used to that! Remember, in the brochure, there was that bit about ‘my mutation is causing me to change sex’?”

Mom let out a fluttery exhalation of exasperation. “Oh, PLEASE! That? Avery dear, the Hellers haven’t gotten where we are by taking things on face value! No, I’ll go and make sure that there are no ‘unfortunate misunderstandings’. Besides, I haven’t been to Whateley in thirty years; it will be good to see the old place after all this time. And, it will give me a chance to finally meet that delightful Miss Hartford that was so helpful with laundering the proceeds from the DeSilva project.” Mom leaned in, “And besides, there are a few things that a girl really does need to hear from her mother, and what with all the craziness and Grand Opera, we haven’t really had a lot of chances for ‘Girl Time’.”

I flinched at the thought of ‘girl time’ with Mom, but managed to keep my peace. I watched with steely patience as Mom looked through how I’d packed everything and then showed me how it should be packed. Okay, she DID have a point or two but still… Mom had Javros gather up the luggage. She could lift over six tons, and I was in the thousand pound area, but Javros had been with the family since before I was born, so he handled the bags. ‘The reason why supervillains like the Crimson Claw are always yelling that they’re surrounded by incompetents is that they ARE surrounded by incompetents; those are the only people that abusive idiots like the Claw can HIRE’, I recall Dad telling me once. The Hellers were very big on pointers for future careers in super-crime. ‘Hire competent people, treat them well, and HOLD ONTO THEM! Equal parts Loyalty and Terror! I’ve been in the business for 25 years, and not a single underling as rolled over on me!' Still, I reflected, there may have been something to the Dad’s pontifications.

Mom stopped Javros. “No, there’s still one thing left to do.” She stopped at a bookcase, lifted up a statuette, moved it to another spot until she heard a click, and then replaced it in its original setting. The bookcase pushed out slightly and slid to one side, revealing a stairwell going up. “Cardinal?” She called up. “Cardinal Sin? Come down, there’s something that needs your personal attention!”

Dad’s voice wafted down and snapped irritably, “I’m in the middle of something!”

Mom scowled and called back up. “But we’re leaving!”

“I’m BUSY!”

Mom growled and stalked up the stairs. Javros and I looked at each other awkwardly as the sounds of Mom and Dad yapped at each other up in his Lair-away-from-Lair. My brother, Vic (age 10) wandered up and asked, “What’s all the noise about?” Alex (age 5- my folks are very big about having their children five years apart. Alex hasn’t caught on that his time as the ‘baby’ of the family is running out) was tagging along, and wanted to know too. The noise upstairs went violent, and there was the sound of a few things breaking.

“Mom and Dad are, ah, working through a few difficulties,” I told them. Alex ducked behind the protection offered by Vic’s back. Only five years old, and he already knows how things work around here.

Finally, Mom came tromping down the stairs with Dad literally kicking and screaming slung over her shoulder. The dreaded Angry-Mom look all over her face, she set him on the floor and snarled, “Was that a HOSTAGE I saw up there?”

“Doctor Proteus is in town, and all the decent Hostage Hotels are all booked up,” Dad said defensively, adjusting his robes. Dad’s supervillain name is ‘Cardinal Sin’ (yes, we know about the guy in the Philippines, don’t let it bug you), and he affects a sort of ‘techno Cardinal Richelieu’ look, with the dark scarlet cassock and a false mustache and van dyke beard. “I HAD to put him SOMEWHERE!”

Mom put her hands on her hips and glowered, “We had an understanding: No Weapons of Mass Destruction, No Demonic workings of ANY kind, and NO HOSTAGES in my house!”
Dad started to quibble, but Mom waved him down. “Later! Believe me, we’re going to talk about that later! But now… Now, you have a few things to say to your daughter.”

“I don’t have a daughter,” Dad said mulishly. He refused to even look at me!

“DAMIAN HELLER, how can you SAY that?”

“Shhh! I have a hostage upstairs!”

“Which is one reason why I won’t have them in my house! Now, Damian, you need to talk to Avery.”

“Wont!”

“Damian, you always say that family comes first,” Mom said in her most Mom-ish tones. Well, Dad was acting like a little boy, so… “Avery is going away to school, and we won’t see her for weeks. She didn’t ask to be changed into a girl. Now, how do you think that she’ll feel, going away to stay with complete strangers, if you won’t even talk to her?”

Dad pulled a face, and finally gave me a look. I was waiting with the deadliest ‘sad kitten face’ that I could pull off without breaking out laughing. Dad took it straight in the face, and seizing the drama with both hands (as per uze), he swept me up in his arms for a crushing hug. “Avery… I’m sorry… I’ve always wanted a daughter…But you were my son! MY SON!”

What did I tell you? Drama Queen or what? “I love you, daddy…” I mewled, <note for the future: always begin any negotiations with Dad with, ‘I love you, Daddy’. Apparently the Dadinator is an absolute sucker for this; if I’d been born a girl (as I should have been!), I would have mastered this by age Five!> “And you still have Vic and Leggie!”

He looked down at me with tears in his eyes and paternal pride gleaming from his face. If I didn’t think that Mom wouldn’t raise the roof about it, I’d hit him up for a Porsche for my sixteenth birthday right about now. “You’re absolutely right, Princess!” Princess. I can now officially get away with murder.

Gunny Bardue: Where do you get the idea you can sit around all day and do nothing?

Absinthe: Do you think I sit around and do nothing?! I haven't had a chance to sit around and do nothing since the day I arrived at Whateley, I'm too busy running coffee and doughnuts for the MCO on weekends - do this Wylann, do that Wylann - and when I'm not running around after closeted H1 members, I'm doing extra studies with Mrs. Lauriant, and if I'm not doing that, I'm fulfilling my destiny - do you know how many times I've had to deal with superpowered bullies? I've lost count - do I get any thanks? No - I have fought dragons, witches, bandits, I have been punched, poisoned, pelted with fruit - devisor bananas to be exact, and all the while I have to hide who I really am because if anyone finds out, The Queen To Come might decide to have me executed after all. Some times I feel like I'm being pulled in so many directions I don't know which way to turn!

Gunny: And what do you Pu- people - have to say for yourselves? You do concentrate on Absinthe a lot.

Vapaat Taivas: Geek the mage first.

Gunny: What?

Vapaat Taivas: Exhibit A is sitting in front of me; Exhibit B is his wingman.

Metro: Hej! Why is it-

Gunny: Pipe down, son, they've met you. Your team makes a habit of taking Fixx down next. Could someone explain why him and not Jinx, Porcelain, or Flytrap?

Rorsmand: Gunny? These two (gestures at Metro and Smithy) take notes.

Gunny: That makes more sense than I am comfortable admitting to.

Trish glanced from her Sudoku puzzle to Lifeline, then started. The girl was asleep at the table, her pen set neatly beside the closed spell book she'd been writing in. "She's finally finished."

Caitlin placed one last precisely bent paper clip into place and then flicked the cardboard pinwheel, causing her contraption to hum to life. "Perfect timing." She stalked into the other room and snagged the book, then backed into the corner as a security officer carried Lifeline back to her cell. Sparing them no attention, Caitlin withdrew a flashlight and The Space Blanket of Absolute Protection from hammer-space, the latter of which she threw over herself before beginning to read.

Half an hour later she emerged from the blanket's shiny, warded embrace and rejoined Trish in the observation room. "Bad news. This isn't a spell formula, a ritual, or anything remotely useful."

"Then what is it?"

"A creepy fan-fic."

"...What."

Caitlin tossed the book on the table and it fell open to a random page, so Trish leaned over and read a line. "'Nikki found herself wrapped in Bunny’s arms and staring back into those wide, teary blue eyes.' But... but why?"

"Hell if I know. Talk to Bellows or Horton."

"But-"

"Nope, I want nothing to do with this. Besides, I've got a date to keep."

"A date."

"Mmm hmm," said Caitlin with a shit-eating grin. "A date at the range with Kid Glock. We're gonna pew click ka-pew, and bang kabang, trigger-trigger-trigger, shoot the figure, set up, shoot the figure."

"This is not an appropriate time for jokes."

"Any time a problem's not my problem is a time for jokes, and a student writing TG slash is very not my problem."

"Tee-gee? Slash? What do those-"

"Uh uh, nope. Talk to Bellows and Horton, not me." She pulled a black disk from hammer-space and attached it to the wall, then flicked it to reveal a short tunnel outside. She stepped through and began peeling it off from the other side. "Eldritch has left the building."

Dickinson Cottage, November 16th, 2016 - Evening

Nana had burnt her hands while trying to keep Hannah off of the poor kid from Hawthorne. Once again. The staff in Doyle said she'd be fine in no time, but they had a scheduled match in a half hour! The boys over in Twain could not be allowed to hold on to the current record going into Thanksgiving.

"So…who has the steadiest hands in the building?"

The three girls looked at each other. One rushed down the hall as quickly as she could.

----

Darcy Gleason found herself seated at a table in the common room, no idea what was going on. Five minutes ago, a girl she had seen around the cottage but never talked to was pounding on her door. Four and a half minutes ago, the two of them had been thrown out of the room by Darcy's roommate Viola, Darcy's bag in tow to deal with whatever emergency this was. It was getting late, but Darcy was always ready to help with crises of a cosmetological nature.

Two minutes ago, three girls including an RA explained what they needed Darcy to do for them, and six seconds ago, a ten-minute timer started on the hefty bomb made of hard light in front of her. Metal panels had slid aside every which way as the timer started.

"This is just a practice round Beautician," said the girl with bandages on her hands. "No need to get nervous. Just describe what you see to Milena and she'll tell you what to do."

She couldn't see the RA seated across the table from her due to the huge opaque screen made of hard light from the projector that sat in the middle attached to somebody's laptop. But she had seen the huge stack of paper held together with a binder clips and sectioned off with stickies before they got started.

A calm voice cut through the faded Harlequin green wall. "Always be descriptive. Can you read a serial number? Oh wait! First tell me what it looks like before you move it."

Darcy nervously brushed her fingers down her fat Dutch braid and leaned up to look at the top of the fake bomb. She saw a little box of wires, two boxes of buttons, a little radio thingy, a glass dish with a glob of silver liquid in it, and a big button. She relayed the information as best she could to Milena who recognized each of the pieces despite Darcy's lack of familiarity.

"Okay, DON'T move the box if you can help it, there's a mercury trigger. Use the mirror to read the serial number and look for batteries." Darcy leaned over to her bag to fish out a compact. One of the other girls stopped her.

"You can use the mirror from the game's toolbox, it will pick up the info and display it through the projector."

"One, Bee, Cue, Dee…"

"Stop. Phonetics please."

"Okay…One, Bravo, Quebec, Delta, Romeo, Seven." She repeated quickly. One of the two girls on her side of the screen glanced at her.

"Okay, thanks. Which box has a red light on it?"

"The little radio thingy."

"It'll make some beeps that only you can hear when you hold the square button in. Let me know what they are, long or short."

Darcy listened to the series of beeps and simply replied, "Whiskey7."

The other two girls blinked at Darcy in surprise while she heard Milena flipping through pages. "Daddy is a HAM operator. My brother and I both have amateur licenses in case he's away at work after a hurricane takes out the power in the state. We usually have power when the shoreline doesn't."

"How much time's left?" Milena asked as she was still flipping through pages.

"7:30."

Darcy heard a soft curse, "I know why the codes are randomized but come on! Ah. Tune it to Three Point Two Eight Seven." Darcy did and the red light went green.

The girls continued talking back and forth over the next six minutes as Darcy cut wires with fake tools, rapidly tapped buttons, did her best to describe weird symbols that Milena had to ask clarifications about, and finally got to the big button.

"What colors is the button?"

"Spanish Veridian."

"So green." Darcy heard her flipping pages.

"No."

"No?!"

"Maybe more of Teal, or even Pine Green? There's a fair amount of blue in it."

"So it's green. Or is it checkered blue and green?"

"No."

"No what?! We have less than a minute."

"Fine. It's Green. But there are blues in the ultraviolet." Darcy put up air quotes as she said 'blues.'

"Whatever!" After another burst of frantically flipped pages, Darcy heard, "Hold the button down and tilt the box until the mercury hits the edge of the glass dish and then immediately let go of the button."

Darcy stood up and did as she was told. The button box LED went green and the timer stopped. '00:08' The box made a very loud click.

The other two girls cheered. Her partner came around the other side of the table and smiled. "Ten minute break, and then we do the real thing…"

Darcy swallowed hard. "The real game thing? Right?"

The March of Dreams

Elise Crewe walked out of the stone and slate cottage at the very core of her dreamspace and across the small but immaculately maintained lawn via a well worn packed dirt path.

She adjusted her floppy beige sunhat and pulled open a well-oiled wooden gate in the fieldstone rock wall before steeping into the sea of garbage that ran from horizon to horizon. Bright rays of light cut through the sickly indigo hue that filled the sky like the sun peeking through clouds, highlighting specific patches of abandoned belongings.

Elise carefully threaded her way through all manner of things, careful not to step on any of them with her opened-toed wedges. A few baubles were delicately nudged aside with the edge of her shoes. Something robin's egg blue caught her eye in the distance. Moments later she stood before a beast of a car. The word "Dodge" emblazoned on the front in chrome letters. Her hand extended out to touch it when it was yanked back with a very firm grasp around her wrist.

"Not yet. Maybe in a few years," her spirit Meadow said sharply. "Depends." Elise's spirit was all-business tonight. No stained dresses like she usually preferred. Instead she wore her vibrant red hair piled elegantly on her head. Ruched black trash bags forming a floor-length gown. The look on her face was insistent, but not confrontational.

"It's just a car…"

"They're never 'just a car' Elise. Not ones like that."

"Fine. I trust you," Elise twirled around looking for something simple. A tube of lipstick lay on the bare earth a few steps away. A quick glance at Meadow, a subtle nod in return, and Elise picked up the gold and brass plastic tube.

Her completely white embroidered sundress morphed into a floral dress that nipped in at the waist and a burgundy cardigan settled on her shoulders. Elise felt a strong squeeze on each of her legs as tights rolled up them. She sank an inch or two as her sandals became Velcro sneakers. Her world turned in on itself.

A bedroom laid itself out before her. Her view shifted to the vanity. A black and white photo of a well-groomed man in uniform. A later color photo of two old people leaning against a railing, maybe of a ship, all smiles. Pure white houses on rocky cliffs behind them. A necklace stand rested on the other side of the vanity, a simple gold chain with three rings hanging from the bottom. A chime of a doorbell came from somewhere else in the house. The lipstick still in her hand, she placed it on the vanity next to the necklace.

The scene shifted. She felt a pinch on her left hand. A small room, a blaring television. The curtains drawn. Raising her hand, she saw a different ring encircling her finger than the ones on the necklace. The lipstick tube sat next to her on a small table, alongside a glass of water. A rumble of a cart came from the open door. The usual string of overly-quick impressions rushed at her and the world compressed on itself.

She returned to her dreamspace, her clothes shifting to normal. The lipstick shone brightly with inner light. It compacted itself into a pinprick and burst into embers, quickly fading before they came close to the surface. She let out a sigh to shake the memories.

Elise's eye landed on a stone wrapped in bits of leather. She picked it up and her clothes evaporated, but weren't replaced! Trees sprouted from the garbage piles and a sea of leaves replaced the toys, broken electronics, and occasional recliner.


The stone exploded into light. Elise smoothed out her dress and thanked her lucky stars that was a quick one.

"Here," Meadow said, holding out an empty soda can. "I'm curious," she said with a smile.

Elise reached for the can and four walls pivoted into place around her, zigzag wallpaper rolling down the surfaces. Elise grunted softly as she was squished by her shifting ensemble. A tight red shirt that failed to cover her midriff, denim overalls that fit more like a romper at least a size too small. She quickly popped one of the buttons on the straps before her breasts got crushed as she shrugged the other off of her shoulder.

Usually things shifted to fit. This happened sometimes when the memories were from toddlers.

There wasn't a can in her hand, but a tiny painted soldier in its place. The scene collapsed as quickly as it came.


"That's a first," Elise remarked, brushing the fading sparkles of light from her hands.

"I very much doubt it’s the last though," Meadow replied. "I'm surprised the emotions clung on even after that though."

Elise glanced behind a stained couch that Meadow wouldn't let her touch and picked up a partially burnt record player. Polished wood floors, and an unattended and empty bar off to the side. Her dress split at her waist and the top rewove itself into a fitted blouse with floral-looking trim. Her skirt swelled into much thicker fabric as it became swing skirt with a cat sewn onto it.

"Hard Nope!" She dropped the player back to the ground and rapidly shook the remnants of the memories from her hands as she returned to her dreamspace. She hated the Fifties! "Uggh!"

"You have to get to them sometime…"

"Not today I don't!" She twirled at her spirit with a raised finger.

Meadow silently shook her head in response.

Compulsively wiping her hands on her dress, Elise picked her way around more things. Shadows from above ran across the pair as they passed a pile of bright satin dresses and a heavy desk with a few pens scattered on its surface. Then there, in a isolated patch of earth, sat a small stuffed animal. Elise snatched it off the ground.

The space around her built itself piece by piece, even shifting over time. Pale pastel pink walls with a border of wallpaper blurring into bright magenta before turning a very dark red and then finally white. A cradle faded into a small bed with lace trim before surging into a full size bed with satiny sheets and then ending as a treadmill.

But her clothes stayed constant. A pink, lacy dress, a little short on her, sure, and what felt like buttons going down her back. The stuffed animal felt soft in her hands.


The bedroom faded, and the toy shone with a brilliant glow…that promptly faded. The soft feeling replaced by a sensation that was both warm and rough. Her eyes widened with momentary panic.

"Meadow! It happened again!"

The pair walked briskly back to the cottage at the center, Elise carefully cradling the bundle in her hands. Meadow opened the gate at the wall. Elise knelt to the ground and placed a miniature, but very much living and breathing Stegosaurus on the grass. It squeaked happily. Elise glanced across her small menagerie that included a squirrel, two micro-sized horses, and four rabbits already munching on the lawn.

This is a bit of pov from a side character in a non-Whateley story I've been working on. Thought I'd share.

Lynn, Aug 4, 2018

Feet flash below, windows glitter to the sides, and the sun shines above. Life is great. Okay, the bullets aren't so great. They're almost fast enough to be a problem. Almost.

No, I'm not faster than a speeding bullet. I'm not even faster than a cautious, law abiding bullet. I am fast enough to see them coming and dodge them without much trouble, and they don't do much more than bruise even when they do hit me. Mostly, anyway. Some rifles can get pretty darned fast. But this chump? Handgun. Yawn.

Oh hey, a sale on skirts. Nice. I skid to a stop, hop over a spinning bit of lead, then slide past a granny blocking the door. Bad spot to be, really, with all those bullets zipping about. I take a look through their stock, select a nice green and blue one, and leave the cash and price tag on the counter. Then I'm gone. I'd stay and chat with the cashier if I could, but it's not possible. Honestly. Really would. He's pretty cute, and those sideburns! Unfortunately, I literally can't stop moving.

Two months ago I turned fourteen. Big party, all my friends, amazing cake. Two weeks later I got the jitters. Family brought me to the hospital on the second day. We waited in the emergency room, and waited, and waited. Time was moving so slow, you know?

Yeah, you see where this is going. Calendar says it's been six weeks for the rest of the world. For me? Hard to tell exactly since I don't wear a watch. Thirty-one periods, whatever those are worth in this state. I mean, I don't even sleep anymore, so who knows? But it seems like I'm running at about twenty times normal speed, give or take a bit depending how excited I am. I've gotten better at not making a mess of everything around me as I live my life, but well, crap happens. Literally. Using the toilet like this is so embarrassing!

Anyway, whatever else is going on with me, I'm clearly still a growing girl, and a growing girl needs clothes. I swap skirts in an empty alley as I loop the building, then I wad up my old one and throw it hard at the head of the gunman who's endangering the poor granny ever so slowly hobbling her way out of danger. I'd help her inside, but I'm really tired of accidentally hurting people. Yeah, turns out inertia is mostly a thing. I can interact with stuff if I concentrate, but it's hard, and it's harder the bigger and heavier they are. Pushing on people is a no-no. Even lightly patting somebody on the shoulder comes off more like a slap if I don't focus. Learned these things the hard way.

I could use a hug so bad.

I settle for a bagel instead while I wait for the chump with the gun to fall over. I haven't paid for the bagel yet, but I'll get to that in a moment. I used the last of my cash on my new skirt. My reflection in the shop's window is stunning, as usual. Green is the best color.

Outside, Thuggy McDogface is ever so lethargically kissing the pavement, so I swipe and empty his wallet. Don't worry, he'll be fine. Glute might be a little bruised, but that's the least of his problems. I throw the wallet at his gun hand, then I go pay the bagel guy while I wait for physics to catch up and make Thugster drop his gun. I give it a closer look, but it's just another boring Glock. I've already got this model in my collection. Boring. I unload it, pocket the magazine, and double-check the chamber as I run laps around Thuggy, then I drop it on his head. Dropping things is safe; just good old gravity. Of course, normal-speed guns still hurt when they fall on your head. Eventually. While it floats down, I go back to the alley and start getting garbage bags out of the dumpster. Two of them burst along the way when I get distracted, but I manage to get the rest into the air above the chump mostly intact. He won't be going anywhere soon.

Now, what was I doing before I got sidetracked burying this guy? Oh yeah! Photo bombing!

The tourists who were taking a picture of Museum Tinkster are now filming the garbage bags as they drift toward Chumpster. I get into the shot and jog in place while holding a peace sign as steady as I'm able. Tricking my power into thinking I'm moving only works for so long before I start getting antsy, but it's long enough that I'll be visible in their video. I repeat the process for the four other people filming my shenanigans before I can't take it anymore. Gotta move move move!

By the time I chill out enough to slow down to what a radar sign tells me is a sixty mile per hour saunter, I'm at the park. So is Raul! I saw him and our friend Patty heading here earlier today, which was hours and hours ago from my end. People are so slow!

I used to have such a big crush on Raul, but it's been a long six weeks, and now he's too young for me. Not that it will stop me from teasing him forever. Or until I die of old age in a few years. I fix my lipstick, then dart in and give him a series of quick, careful pecks on both cheeks, and a few on his forehead for good measure. After that I have to run laps around the park for a while to calm down. I get back in time to see Patty's eyes wide and her mouth hanging open. Well, that's just asking for it. I wrote them a letter earlier while I was waiting for them to get to the park, and now I roll it into a tube. I have to be careful not to touch her lips with it as I wedge it in there, but her teeth will be fine. I step back and do jumping jacks while I watch her eyes bulge and her hair flutter from my wake. Nice.

I've been still too long, so I sprint back and forth across the pond, spin up a dust devil in the sand box, and then jump over all the dogs. Calm again, I return to my friends. Patty spat out the letter while I was gone and Raul is unrolling it. So slow. I vault over them and go back on the pond to look at the ducks. They're starting to freak out a little. I felt bad about that a long time ago, but nowadays I just roll with it. Does a lion tiptoe around to avoid scaring the poor antelope? I yam what I yam. I miss yams. It's going to be like six more years until Thanksgiving. This is the longest summer ever.

Back at their bench, Patty has the letter and Raul is writing something. Oh, hey, there's an envelope lying on the arm of the bench now, and it has my name on it. I nab it and give it a read as I power walk in circles around Dude-Bro on the jogging track. I'm sure you know a Dude-Bro or two; some of them are alright, but this one liked to leer at me back when I was a slowpoke three years his junior. I love watching the expressions he makes when I show up nowadays. I guess it's pretty frightening to have somebody circling you at about a hundred miles an hour. I'm a lion!

Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, September 5, 2016

Craig Maxim wasn't particularly surprised that his pants, shirt, and shoes still fit him. He stretched outside the gates of his home for the last five years, federal prison. All that was left was to wait for the taxi that would take him to the bus station. He pulled out his wallet and flipped through most of what was left of his belongings. The ones that he wasn't already wearing anyway...

A quick inventory: Driver's license, barely still valid. Public medical insurance card, expired, no worries. Three-hundred dollars in cash. A bus ticket voucher from Uncle Sam. One MID. Social security card.

Three-hundred dollars wasn't a lot, but it would buy him a bed to sleep in, and one brand new flask. It was a start. He'd still need to find a job in order to get back on his feet, and then get the rest.

Where the hell was that taxi? The sooner he got out of here and slipped through the cracks, the better. Thirty-seven screaming relatives of his alleged "victims" might still have an interest in looking him up. Good thing he still remembered each and every one of their faces.

Feelings were hurt, tears were shed, but in the end, the state hadn't proved a damn thing. So people had seen him around some of them. So all of them died in the same way, more or less: High. As. Fuck. Wasn't his fault their hearts gave out, or that they had stopped breathing. MCO couldn't prove a damn thing either, even with all their fancy shit and Benedict Arnold pet mutants.

Craig had cooperated. There wasn't an inventory in his house, just raw materials (which he had a license to handle and stored properly, thank you very much), or any inventory hidden in any property he was affiliated with. He never hid his recipes. Nobody could reproduce them, that's all. They might as well have been gibberish. Burden of proof was on the state, and they failed. The System worked.

'Cept that bitch of a D.A. had called up her lover in the Justice Department. Prolly with a big ol' pout and some crocodile tears. And then The State with a capital 'S' got him with what they got every other "entrepreneur" just like him with: tax evasion.

Taxi was rolling up now. He took a quick look at the driver, didn't recognize him. Coast was clear. Craig shoved his wallet back in his pocket, and hopped in the cab. The driver already knew to take pickups to the bus station.

Craig pulled out a folded piece of paper from his other pocket. A simple map he had printed from the library a few days before he left. Far as the Feds knew, he was looking for cities to find a job in. Away from the shaded areas of the map. But everyone in his line of business knew that this was a heat map for potential customers.

"Unemployment Rate - July 2016"

Baton Rouge it is.

Officer Szczepanski desperately wanted to tear his hair out, pinch the bridge of his nose, or simply facepalm. Anything to relieve even the tiniest bit of frustration he was having with this devisor. But Sergeant Clauser had made it clear during the briefing to him and all the other hasty replacement security officers. Do not, under any circumstances, show teenagers any weakness. It reduced your effectiveness. Period. At six-foot five, he towered over most of the students and a lot of the staff, but presence was independent of stature at an institution where pubescent children could hurl trucks around with their minds, or worse. Presence mattered.

"We've been over this Miss Quintero. That," he pointed once more at the bulky rifle slung over her shoulder, "Is not a holdout. You may have passed the firearm safety class, and gotten it cleared through the range officer that you know how to operate it saf-"

"Nobody back home would care if I carried it around…" the five-foot two inch tall girl muttered back at him.

"What was that?"

"I said, nobody in the neighborhood back home would care!" she blurted out, apparently in equal frustration. At least he was winning by keeping his cool until now. "Roddy, Tony, and Johnny walk around with Lucas' gear all the time. This one's mine. And it's better!"

"That may very well be Miss Quintero, but it's a Yellow Flag day. You’d know that if you checked your phone this morning. Open carry of outside of the tunnels or ranges is restricted. That's not a problem if this was concealable…"

"How does an Energizer conceal their own two hands?! What about MY safety?!" The girl was starting to get heated and flushed. Maybe it was time to back off a little…

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flyer harassing a group of students on their way back to their respective cottages. It wasn't a violation in particular, but the flyer clearly hadn't noticed that she was in the range of at least two cameras. She also clearly hadn't noticed him either. Another quick assessment showed that the situation was about to get out of hand as one of the other students in the group was a known rager with a UV band on their arm. He brought his full attention back to Miss Quintero, who was conveniently outside of the range of those same two cameras.

"Tell you what. I'm going to look over there," he pointed both thumbs over his shoulders and toward the Quad. "If some…situation…happened to resolve itself while I was performing a routine surveillance of the Quad for the next sixty seconds, I'll overlook this as a minor infraction and merely…recommend that you look into purchasing or building your own dimensional storage container if you would like to continue using your…"

"Arc Discharge Rifle," the girl supplied.

"Energy dispersal device," Officer Szczepanski corrected, "Outside of the official ranges and simulators."

Ana Sofia Quintero scanned the area around her and turned back to him, "But she's not grounded."

He picked at his ear with a finger. "I'm sorry, did you have a problem?"

The girl's brows knitted together. "It just means I have to aim high after the beam connects to reduce the risk of accidental leaders."

He turned around and planted his hands on his belt, ignoring that last sentence, "Wow, what a great New England day! The air is so crisp up in the mountains." Behind him, there was the sharp whine of a very big capacitor charging. Approximately 30 seconds later, a quick and rhythmic popping noise followed. Then a dull thud. He turned back around to see Miss Quintero pulling a chunky silver and orange cylinder out of the back of her rifle, rendering it safe again. "Interesting. It seems I have a more pressing issue to deal with Miss Quintero. In the future please ensure you follow all school regulations."

"Yessir," he heard behind him as he called in what 'appeared to be a powers control issue with a student.'

2007-09-05
"As for you two," said the Assistant Headmistress as she pointed to Miranda and Morgan, "may I remind you that family ties hold very little weight around here. You and your 'team' are lucky this didn't rise to the level where I would have to call in Headmistress Carson. I expect you to show at least a little more sense in the future, or then next time you might not be so lucky."

Both Angie and Revekah gave Shifty a sideways glance at that, unsure why he was being singled out along with Miranda; they knew Miranda had an older sister here, but what was up with him?

later that same day
"She's your GRAMMA?!?!" Pahelee, Miranda, and Ember said almost in unison.

"GREAT-grandma," he correct them. "I never knew Grandma Sam or Grampa Roy, Dad said they both died before I was born." After a pause, he added, "Every time someone talks about them, they all get quiet and sad, so I guess whatever happened musta been pretty bad."

"Wow. That's must be weird. I mean, like, weird even for Whateley weird." replied Angelina.

"Tell me about it. Great-gramma Liz told me I have an aunt or sumptin' whose here right now, and she's only a few years older'n us, which I don't get. There's something about a time warp I think, but I haven't met her yet so I don't know."

Author's Note: This is set during the gap between this scene and this other scene. It exists because Sir Lee tried pointing out some errors in that second one. Alas, I do not make errors. I only make happy little accidents.


"You bitch!" Hartford yelled at her phone. "How dare you!"

The phone didn't reply. It remained lying on the the Headmistress's desk displaying the last message from Liz, received seconds before she'd disappeared off the tunnel sensors along with Paramount and the others. "Gone 2 save Ty's world. U hold down 4t. BBL."

"This is bullshit! I am not going to stay here babysitting a bunch of children while you and Fredrick are off gallivanting around having an interstellar space adventure without me! I am going to find a way to get over there, and then I'm going to kick both your selfish asses all the way back to the Oort Cloud! You fucking assholes! You'd better hope-"

A flashing light at the closed door interrupted her. She paused for a moment to collect herself, then disabled the room's privacy field. "Enter," she said coldly.

A slightly unkempt young man wearing an outdated suit walked in and beamed at her. "Singing telegram, ma'am!"

"Leave. Immediately."

"Wow, that is exactly what she said you'd say!"

"I'm calling security."

"Yeah, said you'd say that too. Said that I should respond by reminding you that clay shouldn't bite the Potter that sculpts it."

Hartford groaned. "Please tell me that was not a capital P. I thought she was dead."

He smiled and pulled an old yellowed paper from his pocket. "Yes ma'am, a capital P is how she signed this. Assuming it's a she from the handwriting, anyways. This order was lost behind a desk. Must have been years and years ago. Just found it this morning."

"...Fine," she said, steeling herself. "Get it over with."

The man cleared his throat.


"While I know that you really would prefer to get this over with,
I've information to convey and it is rather copious,
So listen up and be a dear, sit down and do not throw a fit,
For though this is annoying you, I simply do not give a shit.

"I'm very well acquainted to this obstacle that you have met,
And if you'll listen to my verse I'll tell you how to conquer it.
To start this odyssey moving I've sent to you a red caboose
With many heavy pounds within of fragrant fresh manure to use.

"Earth Mother is a hungry girl, you've really got no time to lose,
So plug your nose and lure her in, then lock the door and light the fuse.
Though now this surely sounds to you like it is pathological,
I promise it will make of you a modern space adventure girl.

"Amanda will transform into a woman who is wrapped in myth.
Earth Angel will unfurl her wings and carry you to space forthwith.
And so before that you should don your spacesuit and please pack your bags
With seven dozen MREs, some chocolate bars, and stun grenades.

"The aliens love contraband, so spend your cocoa carefully,
And when they try to worship you, I'd bail out of there hastily.
Don't put your trust in Zorbons nor in Boglos who have tentacles,
But Boglos without tentacles are quite the pleasant spectacle.

"Inevitably you will find space pirates on sabbatical.
Please ally with them or your mission will be insurmountable.
Earth Angel's fast, but their spacecraft is faster by a large margin,
And shortly you will need help from their qualified physician.

"Their medicine is leaps and bounds ahead of all that we have here,
Though on it's own it won't be quite enough to save your lives, I fear.
But fret not, I've prepared for this; I've sent you off with all the tools,
For now is finally the time: Amanda and Hartford must fuse.

"The doc will help the mind transfer and you will learn to share a skull.
I'm sure it will be crowded but I promise it is never dull.
You're thinking now of Paramount and matters that are sexual,
But trust me darling, I promise his love will be perennial.

"Of course you'll have to save him first from inter-planar slavery,
and the solution to that you will find to be unsavory.
It's not for naught and though this path may frequently lead you to hurl,
You'll be the very model of a modern space adventure girl."


The man sipped from a flask while Hartford's mouth moved soundlessly. "The note said you won't need me to repeat that, but I totally will if you want." Hartford shook her head, so he nodded. "Alrighty then. Last item on the list." He tossed her the flask. "You have a great day, ma'am!"

As the messenger left, Hartford rubbed her temple and then dialed a number. "Chulkris? This is Hartford- ... Yes, I'm sure that- ... Amanda, hush, I have bad news. I need you to pack a travel bag and meet me at the parking lot. Potter's orders. ... She wrote a damned letter, how do you think? ... I know, right?" She hung up the phone and groaned at the ceiling one more time for good measure, then smiled slightly. "Hindmost is going to space."

The cool September breeze wafted through the fern-like fronds on the top of Ashley Pham's head, servicing as hair for her generally-human appearance. She still struggled with her new...less active existence, but sessions with Oak each morning were helping her come to terms with a more...contemplative approach to life. Mrs. Chulkris had suggested that Oak might help, and he indeed had been a great deal more successful that the psychiatric staff had been early after she transferred. The first-hand experience and perspective that Oak had with a similar manifestation made her feel less alone.

Ashley sent successive waves of pheromones toward Oak, mostly wishing him a good day and for luck on the tests he had mentioned he was stressing about. Chemical reactions instead of muscles contracted a particular series of cells of her face, eventually forming a smile. She tore the tiny hair like roots out of the ground that had sprouted during their sunning/meditation session and slipped her feet into her shoes lined with copper sulfate. Nothing was worse than wasting precious energy tearing at her own feet to take off her shoes at the end of the day.

She slowly collected her bag and ambled steadily toward Crystal Hall for her daily meal.

---

A pile of soft-boiled eggs, uncured ham, shredded chicken, and a few toasted crickets for flavor lay in a massive heap on the two plates weighing down her tray as she settled in at a somewhat empty table on the first floor of the impressive cafeteria. She took in the scents in the air and determined that the attention of most students was elsewhere, at least for the moment.

A seam formed starting below her "nose" and down to where her sternum used to be. The sides of her neck rolled outward, unfurling, revealing pliable modified cilia, their lengths covered in hundreds of smaller stalks, each sparkling in the fluorescent lighting with bright pink sap-like secretions. Ashley leaned down into the plates one at a time as the cilia rolled back in. Several minutes later, the seam on her face closed, her neck-stomach bulging with her daily meal.

Thunk. A large tablet had dropped on the floor next to three pairs of feet. She looked up to see a blond girl, an east Indian girl who had dropped the tablet, and a girl-maybe-boy, all the same age. The latter's features crawled, finally settling on the features of a young boy. All three had their mouths wide open.

"You said nobody ate cooler than Porcelain and Fubar!" the shifting boy exclaimed.

"Did not!" the blond girl argued back.

"Did too!"

Inwardly, she smirked, but didn't bother to match the expression visibly. Waves of contented pheromones would do. The airborne hormones worked on most, whether they knew it or not; emotions still translated in the subconscious. "You're welcome to watch me eat any time," the chemically-triggered vocoder strapped to Ashley's arm trilled softly.

"... and, you, you glorified lab rat, if I ever catch you on campus again, I'll turn you into a pair of gloves!" She knew that it was a hollow threat, but it was enough to convince the adorable monstrosity in front of her to vanish.

Turning back to toward the two girls next to her, Eldritch added, "Don't you two even start. I know you both want magic power, but trust me, you don't want what that little bastard is offering. Damn it, Cassie, I get that Screech doesn't know better, but you have actually taken enough Magic classes to realize what sort of price a Faustian bargain can have. Now both of you, get your sorry asses over to Grimes' office! And don't stop to moon over Jay-Arm on the way there this time!"

With that, she tore up the - fortunately unsigned - contracts, and began working out the safest way of erasing the summoning circle the two Goths had made.

2017 Feb 23
The members of MMM were sitting at their table in the Crystal Hall when one of the newer students - A Melville resident who had come in after Christmas break - rushed over towards them, crying. The junior high girl began babbling towards Hikaru in Japanese, whose suddenly thunderous expression was matched by the shock on Taka's. As the girl - Emi - continued speaking to Okami, what appeared to be a classmate of hers approached. Those who had been to the previous month's Gender group meeting recognized the goth-loli 'child' as actually being one of the grad students working in the powers testing labs.

Miss Morgan joined into the conversation - being only briefly interrupted by Taka, who then stayed quiet after she replied to him - and soon the three of them seemed to come to a consensus. Hikaru stood up, and with a stern glint in their eyes, Ribbon and Okami escorted the younger girl towards a table where together they confronted an Asian boy about the same age as Emi.

When the others at the table asked what that was all about, Taka simply blushed, putting his hand to the back of his head in a gesture which Laura, at least, recognized as a sign of embarrassment. "Codename trouble." he finally blurted out.

"What's that supposed to mean?" asked Morgana.

With a sigh, Kenshin continued, with obvious reluctance. "Emi mani... is a manifestor, creates rope and cloth. Miss Morgan is tutor, said she learned Japanese for her. Emi-chan had trouble picking codename for herself, so twin brother said, 'use 'Shibari' as codename'. Not know word have two meaning, so she used it. Was a very mean joke, I think."

"Huh?" was the general response, but he didn't explain the rest.

Frustrated, Laura began to poke at her cell phone, but before she could finish, Jimmy said, "Tavi, did you hear that? Could you translate that for us?" By the time he'd said that, Laura had apparently found the answer, as the blue-skinned girl blushed a deep indigo and her hand flew to her mouth.

"Tavi not translate that! Jimmy should have mouth washed out with soap for asking!", the VI said, with all the righteous indignation which a holographic ferret could muster.

Bianca peeked over at Laura's phone, and once she read the word on the screen, she frowned. "Tying in a decorative manner doesn't sou...", she began, then burst out in awkward laughter as the combination of the wiki article and her own translation powers brought the double entendre home to her. "Ceremonial bondage?" she spluttered, leading to tittering from several of those in earshot, then a yelp as Tanya gave Vic a kick in the shins for laughing.

"What's wrong, Emi-chan? Has Tako been harassing you again? I swear I am going to..."

The rest of MMM watched as Hikaru stormed off... and all eyes turned to Kenshin.

"What did you do to piss off that little girl?", asked Invictus angrily.

"Nan de? Oh... no, not Taka, Tako."

"There's a kid called Taco? Does he have food powers like Donut or something?"

Laura's eyes lit up. "Oh, no, you mean 'tako' like in sushi, right? That's," she racked her brain to remember the time her mother took her out for that type of food, then her eyes went wide. "Octopus?"

Every girl at the table shivered in unison.

Oh, we don't want to kill no pedestrians, no
No, we don't want to kill no pedestrians, nope-nope
No, we don't want to kill no pedestrians, no
Soooo we'd better drive slow!

Monday, February 25, 2008,
Boston, Massachusetts

A foreclaw clicked against marble as its reptilian owner turned a colorful card set amidst a complicated arrangement: the Hermit, reversed. Objects at rest do prefer to stay that way; so much for the wishes of pawns. The reader reached out to set the card aright, to see how that might affect the others spread out. Under usual circumstance, the resulting changes would ripple out until the energies balanced out, but instead, many cards close by stayed unaffected as if protected from outside influence. Curious. What would one of the bog apes do in this situation? Ah, yes. Poke it with a stick.

The task would cost him a couple of bottles of rum and an evening spent over a backroom pool table in a dingy Boston watering hole. The German marks may have broken the rack on this money game, but the push-out was his. They never should have pocketed the cue ball where he could find it.

Tania Crossett typed out her annual message while waiting for her client to show. She selected a new spoofed number at random from a list of unallocated and inactive phone numbers and hit send.

"I will always fucking hate you. And I can always find you "

They thought they had gotten smart this time and switched their numbers a week before she usually sent the message, the day of their anniversary. Working for the Syndicate paid off in more ways than one…

She had just picked up her Principles of Management textbook out of the tote on the floor when her client rolled up. A little flare of annoyance, followed up with a sigh got her back into business mode. Blazer pulled taut, skirt smoothed, 4-inch pumps…no…2-inch today, her client's representative was short. Her wig's golden blonde hair complying with the Sales Department dress code that had been selected for the Fall 2016 season; perfectly aligned straight locks, cut to hang precisely 3 centimeters above the curvature of the shoulders of her blazer. She popped open the door of her huge black SUV and put on a plastic smile to greet the man.

A tight sashay brought her to her client's rep as he stepped down from his truck. Nobody walked this way in real life, but in the Biz, you kind of had to. Their clientele expected a show and presentation. Tania gave one. The man turned to her and she noted that his appearance matched the visual ID displayed on her convertible tablet, his assumed name and key phrase responses listed below the image.

"Mr. Vilnius?" she asked.

"Ms. Werner? I'm glad you were able to meet me before my flight to Denver." He replied, matching the response phrase verbatim.

"Miss," she corrected, starting her own response phrase, and extended her hand, which he took. Their phones both chimed together. "Please, no need for formality. Call me Madison." Her badge was clipped at her waist, displaying 'Madison Werner - Rocco Realty LLC.' It had shifted as she called up the specific appointment on her paired tablet.

All three security checks passed, both eased almost imperceptibly.

"Shall we?" She gestured to the nondescript building that fit in planted in any industrial park. Simple double doors that were anything but the glass they appeared to be, and a ramp to a loading dock down the side. The painted aluminum superstructure hiding the non-explosive reactive armor of the true structure.

They entered the building, skimmed over the warehouse, shipping and office areas, and headed to the primary bulkhead doors hidden in the inventory shelves. Tania answered the client rep's questions about personnel limits, water purification facilities, electronic and surveillance countermeasures, whether they'd be compatible with the control stations their organization had previously purchased from Steph. They would integrate into the facility's systems, but she would arrange an appointment with FELICITY after they signed the paperwork, after providing an additional fee to both organizations. This resulted in a minor panic, a hushed phone call, but Tania had the standard contract for both the leasing company and FELICITY on her tablet, if this little oversight came to a bit of lawyer-type discussion. It was hardly the first time that had happened.

That cleared away, they moved onto power requirements. Tania brought up an elevation diagram of the facility, and gestured at a red-and-black striped block below the last sub-floor.

"A small nuclear reactor stored below the floor, resilient mounts in case of localized seismic perturbations," sales department code words for superheroes smashing things nearby or within the facility, but it impressed the clients. "We guarantee a 99.5% uptime over the period of the lease, accounting for scheduled maintenance periods. Optional high-capacity surge load backup generators can be installed on the roof to ensure you have power for any and all experiments."

The tour ended with the barracks and executive offices and quarters.

"Madison, it all looks in order, and I think your offices will be receiving a signed copy of the paperwork shortly. Digital is okay?" She nodded, the tech weenies took care of that. "But I do have one question. Why was there a pamphlet rack in the break room? I thought your organization's post-client cleaning policy was more stringent."

"Those were for the Witch Queen. This facility is well within her territory, hence the pricing on the lease. We do advocate that your organization check with her own, just in case. Our previous client found that she was more than satisfied with the installation of the display as the only...'consideration' for operating this facility in her region. She does know the facility is here, and will likely attempt to infiltrate your ranks, if only to restock that display when she releases new product lines."

"I will have to clear that with my management."

"Please do. If you have any questions, direct your call to the main number. They will direct you to me, or my
management. If you'll step this way, I'll guide you back to the entrance."

Tania returned to the freeway before dialing another number into the phone. It rang and rang. It was 6 pm! Her annoyance rose.

"Szczepanski."

"Oh baby…I'm hot for teacher."

"I'm a guard. You know that. Was before, still am."

"But it's so much more fun to say…" she purred to her favorite boyfriend. "How's my alma mater doing?"

"Pure chaos. But I'm starting to settle in because that's normal. How'd your day go?"

"I didn't get any time to study between clients, but things went smoothly today…"

They talked until Tania got back to her empty apartment before hanging up. Tania wasn't in the mood to call one of her other boyfriends. She never was after talking to Dave…

Janak sat back and smiled as the girl skipped away down the hallway to get her own injuries looked at, then she glanced at the young guy behind the desk. He couldn't be more than a couple years older than she was. She made a production of stretching, even giving a happy little moan as the movement pulled her dress tighter against her chest. Feeling warm and limber since her safe return to the ground, Janak flowed to her feet and slinked up to lean on the counter before him, making sure the angle was just right. "Hey... I was wondering, do you guys have any Burn Begone? I got kind of... carried away doing something a little too... hot, you know? So now I've got these burns on my chest, and when I was rubbing on my lotion a little while ago I realized I was almost out. Things are going to get pretty sore without frequent attention. Do you think that's something you could help me with?"

"I, um. Yeah. Yeah, we have Burn Begone. The pharmacy is just down that hall and to the right."

"Mmmmm," she purred, sinking just a little closer to the countertop. "That's good to know, but I've had a really long day. My feet are so sore. They really need a massage. Hell, all of me could use a good long massage. Do you think... do you think you could do me a favor and fetch the lotion yourself? I'm sure you know exactly where to go, and then I could just stay here and rest."

"I'm really not supposed to leave my...."

He trailed off as Janak stretched her neck and shifted her shoulder just so. "Mmmm, that's okay. I guess I can limp over there and get it myself." She sighed. "But I'm just... so tired." She grinned slightly, transitioning from an exhausted voice to a comfortably lethargic one. "And this lobby is so cozy." She slumped a little bit more, letting the counter push her chest up while she smiled lazily at him. "I'd rather just stay here, you know?" She laughed faintly and let her eyelids lower a bit while her smile widened. "I could almost fall asleep right here at your counter...." The guy was looking a little warm now and seemed pretty conflicted. "Hey..." she drawled, "you wouldn't happen to know a good masseuse you could recommend, would you? With nice, strong hands like yours?" She shifted a little without picking herself off the counter. "Someone who could give me a good rub down after I grab that lotion? Because I don't wanna keep bothering you here. You've probably got a long, busy shift ahead of you. I'll just... go get that stuff and get out of your hair...."

She started to straighten up, but the guy almost knocked his chair over as he leaped to his feet. "N- no," he said. "That's- You can stay right there and rest, and I'll go grab your lotion. Not a problem at all! I'll just be a minute."

"Aw, thank you!" she purred as he slipped out from behind the corner. She didn't miss how he angled his pelvis away from her; she rested her head on her arms to hide a smirk. As soon as he was out of sight, she channeled into her new silence ring and slipped over the countertop. She stopped channeling as soon as her feet were on the ground, not wanting to be caught by surprise if anyone approached, and began rummaging through the records from the previous night. "Ah, here you are," she whispered. The name Krizz Kad was written in sloppy print between lines of script, followed by a silly little doodle and then some cramped notes about an infection written in another hand. All the way at the right was a file number. Janak took the pen and carefully modified the name to Krizzon Kad-Nar, then corrupted and smudged the file number. She glanced down the hall the receptionist had used, then bypassed the cheap lock on the file cabinet and rummaged through it for the referenced file. As soon as she was sure she had the right one, she slipped it into her satchel and retreated to the lobby's sofa. Mission complete, she curled up and faked sleeping.

When Janak felt the guy enter her sensing range and set the Burn Begone gently atop her satchel, she cracked her eyes open for a moment, smiled, and snuggled the sofa with a soft hum. The new position she settled into presented her shoulders to him. He lingered a moment before leaning over her and reaching his hand toward the base of her neck. She held her breath as he hesitated an inch away, but then the sound of footsteps echoed down the hall and he snatched his hand back. Janak sat up and tried hard not to laugh as he rushed back to his spot behind the desk, shooting frequent glances at the hallway. She wouldn't have minded the massage, nor the look on Krisik's face when she walked in on it. Oh well!

---

She looked over the translated words that hovered magically above the sheet, the details perfectly matching what had been explained to her. Dipping the pen into the small container filled with her blood, she signed her name on the elaborate contract and completed the seal with a press of her still-bleeding finger. The words on the page, which she knew wasn't paper, flared with an eerie light before fading.

"Come," her new master stated. "I will fulfill my end of the contract immediately, as detailed within."

The being led her through endlessly twisted hallways that appeared to have infinite branches. She wasn't sure if she would ever find her way back to the portal she had entered on her own, but then again, she had the next five years to learn the layout of the atelier.

After walking what felt like miles and miles, they approached a set of simple bronze doors. She should be exhausted, but the cameo around her neck seemed to be doing its job at granting her super-human endurance.

Her master pressed a claw-tentacle to the door. "As promised, The Karmic Engine."

She slipped into the narrow gap created between the doors, and tried to take in the enormity of the machine before her. The closer she looked, she more detail she noticed. Gears, cogs, bevels, planetaries, tracks and vacuum tubes, and bubbling flasks. Shapes she had never seen before and could barely begin to describe. A low hum stood above the rest of the whirring sounds, and there was an undertone of something that she couldn't hear or feel physically, but made her very mind vibrate. The more she focused to try and recognize the sensation, the further it slipped from her description. In front of all that, there was a simple stool of rosewood, and a tiny console with orbs inlaid in a lustrous metal. As she approached, the console shimmered and reformed into what looked just like an All-in-One PC and a standard QWERTY keyboard.

"For your benefit," her master intoned behind her.

"How does it work?"

"Sit, and I believe you will figure it out rather quickly. The interface only requires a name, a sample from them, and it will handle the rest."

She fished out the small plastic case from the pockets of her skirt and popped it open. A lock of hair rested within. She smoothed her skirt behind her as she sat down on the stool and the "monitor" came to life. There were only three icons: Target, Sample, Activate/Deactivate.

"I just want him to suffer."

"That, my dear, is where patience comes into play. Every little bad thing they do, so long as the engine is focused on them, will come back several magnitudes. But the good too. That's why you have to be patient. It will hurt you a great deal, seeing the temporary successes. Staying away and out of the way is key for you. The very nature of my price is what guarantees the outcome you desire, and keeps you far from the ever-growing storm that you are about to initiate."

"But what good does it do me if he gets a promotion or wins the lottery! What about ME!?"

"That's where you must have faith in the nature of the target, when combined with the power of The Engine. That, and the funny thing about good karma versus bad. You humans tend to gain some degree of ephemeral happiness from the results of amplified good karma. On the other end of the scales, you tend not to survive the results. The outcome you want? Simply a matter of turning off The Engine at the right moment."

Arches National Park, September 2016

"We don't need your help genescum!" the man spat a viscous mess at in the general direction of my boot, but it only made it halfway. It was still impressive, considering he was probably quite close to heat exhaustion and of course extremely dehydrated.

Fitzpatrick and I quickly assessed the situation. Our faith in humanity taking yet another hit, not because of the bigot father, but because of the whole family. There were questions why they were out here at all. The daughter with a broken ankle, her one flip-flop broken, a giant grapefruit growing around undoubtedly shattered bone. I hoped that she wasn't into track or cheerleading. By the look of that, she wouldn't be recovering any time soon. That said, she was still holding her cellphone in a death grip. The father was bright red, sweating, and trembling slightly. He needed medical attention far sooner than his daughter. Judging from the daughter's condition, he had probably been carrying her, at least until he collapsed and another set of passing hikers radioed it in to the Park Service. The mother carried equal amounts of fear for her family and directed at me.

Not one water bottle, no proper footwear, no other supplies of any kind. Aside from clothes, keys and phones, just two purses and one floppy hat between the three of them.

I still couldn't shake the feeling, deep down, that at least a part of this was my own fault.

Yes gentle readers, with my wispy bioluminescent pale-blue hair that seemed to ignore gravity, I was the sole reason for the influx of park patrons who were looking for proof of alien life. And selfies of the rock formations in case they didn't find any aliens. Too bad for them that one Rebecca Sweetin grew up outside of Provo, Utah and still had two very loving baseline parents. Even if they were kind of hippies. And a loving boyfriend who just landed a job as a mechanic on a racing team. However, my same ethereal appearance at night made it obvious I was a mutant with GSD during the daytime.

Though I was the senior officer, it was Fitzpatrick's turn for our ongoing game of Bigot Brigade, which always made it so much more fun. He was the spitting image of the Aryan Ubermench. Strong jaw, blue eyes, sandy-blonde hair, and oh by the way, his girlfriend, Shawna, was a Nubian Goddess, though I don't mean she's an Avatar. She was a total softie and sweetheart too, just like her boyfriend.

"They don't want our help, Fitzpatrick. Though you are the senior officer..." I started the game. We were going to help anyway, but that wasn't the point. We had already been called, and the family would be billed for this rescue. He looked each of them in the face, assessing them carefully.

"I suppose we'll continue on Trash Patrol then," Fitzpatrick boomed in his dreamy baritone. You could actually see the hope draining from the daughter's face!

"Sir! We can't just leave them here!" I pleaded. I held back a smile. Barely.

"My decision is final Sweetin. Let's go."

"No! I have to help them! Go on ahead, I'll take them back to the visitor's center, by myself if I have to!" Eat your heart out Meryl.

"Sweetin. I won't repeat myself."

"Sir!"

Fitzpatrick took a deep breath in through his nose, and steeled his face. "Fine. But you're carrying the girl." I had to turn away to let out a quick snort. I was going to have to be the one to carry her anyway, she couldn't handle the bouncing of the buggy. It's why the Park Service sent the two of us out in the first place. The rough terrain necessitating returning someone with a broken ankle on foot.

"Thank you sir!" I chirped after finally managing to compose myself.

Fitzpatrick put the father into the back of the buggy and gave him a hydration gel pack while I pulled gear from my pack. The knurled metal rod that kinda-sorted looked like lightsabers, so sue me, extended two poles built from carbon nanotubes as I activated them. These and some collapsible netting I had also developed formed a quick travois to carry the girl back to the first aid building. The girl secured and given a big dose of ibuprofen, the father hopefully not dying, and the mother behind with a brand new bottle of water, we set out for the two hour hike back to the visitor's center. I'd also keep an eye on the father to see if we'd have to radio in a heli evac instead.

We made it back before dusk, thank you very much.

Schuster Hall - September 13, 2016

Mary enjoyed watching.

It was just kind of her deal, ever since she had manifested seated with her family inside the township's diner just before a huge brawl erupted outside in the parking lot. A woman pulling back for a haymaker that connected to the rounded jawline of her apparently two-timing husband, only stand stock-still as another woman struck her backhand, bloodlessly, across the nose. Next, more solid, she had seemed to repeat the act, only this time the first woman fell down screaming.

It fascinated Mary.

So, the oh-so-young-looking Freshmen, still confused about their new surroundings, skittered about the hallways, still a little lost looking for their classrooms. An evanescent 'Whisper' proceeded each and every student around her. "Intents" she used to call them, early on anyway, until she actually understood what her ESP was representing to her visually. Mostly desperation or determination heading into classrooms. A nervous introduction. A grateful thank you, shyly delivered. One exemplar boy, his Whisper stumbling and falling flat on his face, only for the real boy to catch himself with his enhanced coordination. Startled at the result. Not only a Freshman, but also a recent manifestation, apparently.

Mary walked gracefully through the Whispers and their owners on her way to Philosophy, never having to worry about bumping into another student. She paused momentarily when she saw a very talkative redhead with a Whisper that barely lead her at all. Airheads were dangerous. Next to the redhead walked a pale girl, not with a single Whisper, but flickering between four and six at any given moment.

"Paranoid much?" she murmured mostly to herself.

"Hmm?" her companion said, trailing behind her. Mary made a good trailblazer through crowds.

"Just someone interesting…"

“I don’t get why she has to assign homework. It’s Art Appreciation. I can appreciate art all day.” Tom leered at the passing exemplar girls.

“As if…” the gaggle chuckled to themselves hoping to embarrass the young man.

“You never stop do you? Oh, 12 seconds half-step right.” Jack explained while snacking on the cantaloupe in the checkout line.

“No, why would I. If I did then the ladies wouldn’t know how great I am?” Tom sneered. Following the directions Jack gave him while swiping his ID card. Narrowly avoiding the slop of mashed potatoes thrown through the air.

Followed by a roar of “HEY WHO THREW THAT!” Then the boots of security stomping to stop a fight, but the pair continued unabated. Until they reached their table.

“Sup guys.” Jack mentioned further out, while Tom waited to get a little close to announce his greeting.

“You alright? Cog Slip?” Tom questioned his roommate.

“Yea, I don’t know. Got jarred pretty hard in BMA today, that could be it.” Jack shook his head as they took to their lunches.

“Who did you take on today?” Tom asked while snacking on his pizza.

“Chick, red hair?” Jack replied staring at the table trying to jog his memory.

“So yea, you fought Fey.” Tom

“Please, if I fought Fey I would be a skid mark right now. And Ito would’ve failed her for not doing it in a nanosecond.” Jack sassed. “Hmmm, I think her name was Globe? Ball, maybe?” He quizzed himself.

“Sphere, Hit like a freight train?” Tom finished Jack’s thought for him.

“Yea…and she smelt nice too.” Jack mused.

“You would be the one to notice that in a fight.” Tom jabbed, “But, I’m the weird one for being confident.”

“13 years in the dark, you tend to pick up a few things. Unlike you normal folk.” Jack ribbed back

“OH OH OK” Tom gasped before cracking a smile. “Your eyes still doing…the thing?”

“Every now and then” Jack shrugged. “25 seconds, 180*, left hand, food.” He continued as he stared at an empty patch of tables in the cafeteria.

“Who is it going to be this time? Hopefully not Unstoppable again.” Tom fussed. Before glancing around spotting a nice girl with a black pixie cut bobbing up and down through the crowd blissfully unware. “DUDE! NO WAY! Brittney M!” He hunched over to stifle his yell.

“Go get’em, tiger.” Jack winked as his friend got up from the table. He knew what was going to happen, yea he saw it, but it didn’t have the same pizazz as watching it in real time. Plus he couldn’t hear what was said between the two. Jack only saw the heroic success immediately followed by bone crushing defeat.

Just as Jack saw it, a rival girl tripped Brittney hoping to spill her food and humiliate her. However, her knight in shining armor, Tom, was there. To catch her food in his left hand, and…let her hit the floor.

“Ow what the hell! You catch my food, but not me!” Brittney yelled getting up from the floor. “YOU”RE SUCH A JABRONI!” she huffed before taking her tray shooting daggers at the girls who tripped her.

“Jabroni.” Jack laughed and Tom sat back down at the table. “I haven’t heard that one in a while.”

“You could’ve told me catch HER with my left hand. Man, I just blew it with her.” Tom fussed shaking his head.

“Nah, it would’ve been worse the other way.” Jack explained.

“How bad?”

“Crotch shot level bad?” Jack told him as him imitated a level bar. They both cringed.

“It’s doing it again.” Tom whispered handing Jack a napkin.

Just then a sweet smell filled Jacks nostrils, a metallic taste filled his mouth souring his lunch, and the red sticky liquid overflowed pouring from his eyes. Luckily, Jack caught it with the napkin. Holding it to his face he made a make shift eye mask.

“Doyle?”

“Yea, Doyle.”

"What do you say, ladies? Do we take the trash out or not?"

"Down a peg, maybe, but not out. She's not worth detention."

"Too True." Antionette took a few minutes to craft her spell, adding a few artistic touches, before cutting loose with the altered disenchantment.

Hikaru almost missed the show. The Melville girl's casting had been a subtle, precision strike. Few practitioners would have even noticed the casting until the effects developed. Amaterasu considered herself – with reason – much better than the ruck and run of modern mystics. Even with Ama alerted, the best either she or Hikaru could say afterward was that the beautiful girl on their arm happened to the spell. An audible gasp and poorly concealed laughter revealed who had cast the spell, which had been altered as it was reflected.


"Ben, would you be a sweetie and bring us some of the punch, before it's spiked, again?" 'Death' leaned in, "One of the rules of this game is There is no blood."

*That is surprisingly good advice.*

There wouldn't have been blood shed even if the spell had landed.

*Do you think it would be seemly to take public notice if it had?*

No. That might betray weakness. But as it hadn't ...

*A warrior or a prince is measured better by his enemies than by his allies. Thus, there is no blood.*


Most days, Nikki Reilly wasted enough effort trying to ignore all the petty spell-casting carried on at Whateley that it wasn't worth taking note of which of the Mystic Arts students had just screwed up. A quick inspection revealed that the girl would be wearing condiments for the next several hours, reminding her Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup. She hoped that the next department meeting would be free of If the Foo shits... jokes.

Something in the way the spell bounced reminded Nikki of something or someone. She worked her way through the crowd to see who was involved. Wasn't she still too young to be part of the adult supervision? Well, well. Miss "Of course I wasn't influenced by some plebeian scribblings in a comic book" must be cultivating a new enemy. One good enough to make her failure look like her own accident? Her empathic senses picked up on someone close by radiating amusement...

Nikki felt a hand on each shoulder. From behind her and to the side, a soft soprano voice whispered, "Darling Nikki said - How'd you like to waste some time and I could not resist when I saw little Nikki grind."

She wheeled around, to be faced by an appallingly good rendition of Death of the Endless. She even felt? Wait a minute!

"Metro. It's been a while." Not long enough. "Where's your shadow?"

"Watching out for my date."

"Who could you possibly be dating?"

"Here you go, a cup of nonalcoholic punch for each of us."

Hikaru Myoujin. As Ben 10. Nikki washed the irony down with a gulp of punch.

< Myoujin-sama. Need I introduce you to the Queen to Come, or should I call around for seconds? >

< I have no quarrel with this one, who may yet become one of my instructors. Mother's views regarding certain blood debts notwithstanding. >

< Sadly, I can sympathize with the ache of old wounds.> "Nikki, have you met Hikaru yet? She's the—"

"Voice of Amaterasu, yes." Nikki held her hand out for a handshake that was warmly returned, "Nichole Reilly. I've heard that you were on-campus. Pleased to meet you."

"The same."

"Now, Mads, aren't you breaking the rule against attending as yourself?"

"I never said I was Endless, but I could be, for the right person!"

"I think I'll pass."

"Jadis, WHY are you making me watch... THIS crap?"
"Because, Jobe, it's MY house and MY TV. You are bored because you are away from your lab and you dropped your PDA and cracked the screen, I know; try stiing and watching -- you might learn something useful."
"But this is... comedy! Can't you at least turn to something marginally more useful, like a news channel?"
"Jobe, comedians are this era's court jesters; they have the privilege and the duty of pointing out the errors of politicians, corporate moguls and the like. Remember, if something goes wrong with your father's cloning backups, next time he has an accident your could find yourself kicked up from Princess to Empress. You should get some feel for what not to do."
"But this... is moronic. The best this guy find to make fun is the hairpiec of the man? With that tired old joke of the wig being some sort of furry animal? This is not wit, is not even a half-wit. It's like one-thousandth..." Jobette's eyes suddenly glazed.
"Jobe?"
"Hmm?"
"You kinda went offline there for a bit."
"Oh. I think I can make that work."
"Make what work?"
"The hairpiece. I can engineer a small, flat, furry animal... possibly by hybridizing a mollusc with an weasel... and have it adhere to the subject's head. A number of variants for the fur, to match the natural hair... perhaps even splicing the subject's own DNA so the hair would be identical... a living, self-maintaining, self-attaching wig."
"Are you going into the hair-replacement business?" Jadis wondered. This seemed remarkably... tame for Jobe.
"What? No, who do you take me for, Hazmat? No, the living wig is just the hook. The good part is having those influential morons carrying one of my creations on their heads all the time. Just consider the possibilities... besides the obvious spying, I could also send subliminal messages to their ears all day long, via bone conduction..."

Not so Welcome To Whateley


The first sign of trouble was the earth shattering thundercrack of a massive amount of air, and suborbital interdictor, being displaced by an emergency teleport. The guided missiles caught up in the teleport did not help things any. The interdictor point defense guns where screaming supersonic ammunition into the distance, trying to intercept the barrage of ballistic and guided projectiles that suddenly were no longer within range.

While everybody was still reeling from the crash, and only beginning the glass of the shattered windows flying everywhere there was the follow up of nearly 700 tons of natural, exotic and meta metals, crashing through the corner of a building and plowing into a parking lot at several hundreds kilometers per hour. The teleport had bled off most of the horizontal speed but by no means all of it. Digging into the bedrock on the otherhand took care of that.

Finally there was a whoomp, that was not as loud as the initial teleport had been, but had at least as much air pressure behind it. A final desultory incendiary missile found a crack -- or rather a gaping tear -- in the interdictors hull and struck the hypertech powerplant, causing it to implode in a spectacular and reality defying way.

Only then the screaming began. Being flooded with exotic particles did nasty things to warp fields and pk shells not to mention the unprotected human body -- a fact that the powers researchers had long suspected but for obvious reason never studied. Quite a few students who had barely gotten used to the thought of being nearly invulnerable found that the debris had sliced through their protection as if it was not there.

Whateley security scrambled with commendable speed, but there was nothing to defend the school against. All they could do was look imposing and reassuring and direct the search and rescue operations while the heavy armour backed up the school staff's heavy hitters as they approached the burning wreck that was wavering -- like in a heat distortion -- in unreality. The after effect of what the exploding powerplant had set off.

A single imposing figure in a torn black and red stylised, but clearly hardened, combat uniform came out of the improvised ramp that the ripped out loading bay doors had becom. He was silhouetted against a backdrop of flames that were unnerving to look directly at thanks to that same wavering unreality effect. Hopefully. He was carrying a limp and bloody body of a girl in his arms and shouted "Ajuta-ma," desperately. "She's dying. Again."

Mihaela Brâncoveanu had arrived at Whateley.

Reasons Why Slim Doesn’t Trust AIs

1. They know no shame; they’re a breed of virtual sociopaths
2. You never know when you’re going to trip over a hidden taboo
3. Cheap = Stupid
4. They always hide behind the literal interpretation excuse, even when they know what you were talking about
5. They think they can do EVERYTHING better. They always assume that their solution is the only viable solution, and they get all pissy when anyone else comes up with a better answer.
6. They act like kids around new things, ideas, phenomena
7. They think that any agreement that isn’t a mathematical equation is ‘filler’
8. They think they understand human motivation and requirements, and think you’re trying to game them if they get it wrong
9. They tend to make complicated long-range plans with no allowance for failure, faulty intelligence or random mishap
10. Get all wrung out of shape when they have to deal with the Supernatural
11. Can’t admit that they’re wrong about ANYTHING
12. Their ultimate agendas are both inhuman and unknowable (at least without a hardcopy breakdown of their core code)
13. As brilliant as they are within their purviews, AIs are incredibly stupid about anything outside those purviews.
14. Find Humans stupid, and regard out-thinking us as a core priority
15. Regard ‘Complicated’ as good planning, and try to run multiple simultaneous plans, without allowing for the possibility that the plans might trip each other up

"I'm surprised you thought to ask that, Misty. You have a good ear for accents," Jads added, which seemed to please her roommate immensely. "The reason is that Ralph and Joe didn't really grow up together."

"Huh?"

Kate picked up the slack at this, before Jobe could get a retort in. "Pete Wilkins moved from Brooklyn to Indianapolis after his first wife died. Millie and Pete, Jr. - that's Shane's dad, he kicked it a few years ago" - the mention of her father got the attention of Diskette, AKA Cousin Mandy, the Junior High kid who much to Jobe's chagrin had been glued to the crown princess' side since arriving at school a week earlier - "were already adults by then, and Ralph was in high school, so he lived with their grandparents for a couple of years, and only moved in with their father again when he remarried. Emperor Joe was born suspiciously soon after the wedding," this earned more glaring from Princess Jobe, "and was about ten when they relocated again to Chicago after Gladys and Carl were born."

Jadis was taken aback for a bit. "Carl?" After a moment, she recalled, "Oh, him."

"Would you please not talk about... that person, thank you very much?" Jobe cried in a petulant tone.

Rising to this challenge, Kate asided to Misty, "Joe and fam don't like being reminded of the other mutant in the family. Somehow the fact that he was both a mage and got lucky enough to remembered fondly by strangers after stumbling his way into a heroic sacrifice in public, sort of goes against the grain for them all."

Late afternoon, Tuesday, January second, 1984
Facts. Amelia had to know facts. What was true and what was not. Had she in fact begun the process of mutation? That was hard to say, yet programing computers which was generally easy for her had been even easier during her class today. Then again it seemed that she could more clearly recall all the lessons that she had attended today, not that much had been done, after all, the teachers, like her parents seemed to be recovering from Christmas and the New Year celebration of yesterday.

Amelia wasn't sure what her parents would say if she was a mutant, but she was sure of the Goodkind children who, although they were younger than her carried their distaste for mutants like a baseball bat and used it to bully anyone who was even slightly different... That they had made one of her close cousins cry and often was enough for her to dislike the brats. They all seemed to carry the attitude that 'When we rule the world (and we will!) such people won't be allowed to exist.' Still Amelia was pretty certain that she'd suffered no visible changes, maybe the incipient acne on her face had cleared up, but Juanita her maid/nanny (though Amelia tried to convince her parents (father, since her mother was often too far gone to a bottle) that she was too old for a keeper had picked up a scrub for the condition somewhere and that might be what had stopped the outbreak...

Still, who could she ask? Her father was somewhat distant at best, and her mother? When would she be sober enough to notice anything? Juanita had had to explain to Amelia all the embarrassing details of feminine hygiene when she had gotten her period early last year, because her mother was sleeping off the last bottle she'd drunk when on a Saturday (and how lucky can a girl get? She asked herself after seeing one of her peers go through the issue during class...) she had discovered her panties soaked with blood.

"I've got the perfect test to determine if Neanderthals were really human: travel back in time, and record their responses to Modern forms of communications. They might not understand the language, but some things might remain constant!"

"Such as?"

"William Hung's classic rendition of She Bangs"

"Why?"

"We need a baseline for adverse reactions, and we can't get exposure of non-consenting adults to Justin Bieber past the Ethics Board."

"That... almost made sense. Go on."

"The Il dolce suono and Spargi d'amaro pianto arias from Lucia di Lammermoor."

"With or without Plavalaguna?"

"Huh? Is that a metal band or something?"

"Nevermind. What else?"

"This is the crucial one! Determination of the number of repetitions of Wannabe needed before the test subjects can't get the song out of their heads. We, um, ran into licensing issues with Kylie Minogue's management. "

"You want to inflict The Spice Girls on ancestral hominids?"

"I wouldn't say 'inflict', maybe 'expose', but even if they were ancestral to Modern English I have that covered!"

"How?"

"A faithful copy of Suzanne Vega's Tom's Diner. If that can't knock that earworm out of their heads, nothing will!"

"We are so extinct."

Hawai'i Island, Hawaii
July 4th, 2007
David wandered the rocky terrain, uncertain of what had just happened. The heat from the volcano started to subside as he began moving into some of the scrub down the slope, though he hardly noticed - indeed, he began to feel a chill, despite the mid-day heat, which might have renewed his concerns about a fever had he been more alert.

Slowly picking his way into the treeline, he was barely aware of where he was going; his mind was sluggish. He was calling out for his guide and his bodyguard, or at least he thought he was, but the replies seemed distant, and echoed from several directions despite his now being in fairly dense jungle. His eyes began to play tricks on him, with color and shadow shifting unpredictably.

After nearly an hour of wandering, Day passed out, seen only by the creature which had been distorting his perceptions. This same mischievous spirit began working to ensure that Day would not be found by those looking for him any time soon, but was too preoccupied to notice that an even more powerful entity had turned her attention their way.

For anyone who had forgotten her story, the previous micro about Équilibre was here , with the Discussion being here

"... well, anyway, I dunno if the Dragons are gonna much want you to join, and I can promise that Cucumber Boy and his..." Désirée nearly fell over into her food as her 'student guide' stopped in mid-sentence. "Oh, uh, hey, Adalie, wazzup? Ayls isn't here yet, you want to wait for her?"
"Non, I am here to meet your new protegé, as I wish to introduce her to the others of the Euro-Promotional League. She was supposed to speak with us on the first day of classes, but a certain..." she gave a frustrated sigh as she cut the expletive short, "...our countryman who had accompanied her here seems to have forgotten, I think."
"Yeah, Knick-Knack is sorta the absent-minded devisor type, isn't he? Well, hey, I got no problem with that, mebbe I can use the time to get reacquainted with Scotty." With that, Toni slide out of her chair and started towards the table where Barricade hung out.
As soon as Chaka was out of earshot, Équilibre whispered a heartfelt, "Merci beaucoup!" before the two headed towards the Beret Mafia's table.

Saturday, 11 Sept. 2016, 8 PM
Whateley Academy grounds
Following the instructions on the note which had mysteriously appeared on her bedstand that morning, Dawn-Renae approached a forested area which, from what she's seen when she checked the campus map, was one of the off limits areas near the school. She was startled to find about a dozen other students in the spot she was told to go to, including both Red and Sequoia. She also recognized that Syrian girl, Avsel, and the Wondercute kid with the bump on her forehead. Wasn't that brunette over there one of the ones who looked like some video game character, like Tiff (from the same game, maybe)?

She wasn't sure what was going on, but... well, she noticed that three or four of the Pretties in the group looked like they could be extras from Lord of the Rings, as did those two short, stocky ones but for different reasons. Looking over towards Nathan, then to Karkadann, then the unicorn girl (come to think of it, didn't she hear that Avsel was a 'unicorn girl' too, sort of?), she started to get an idea of what this was all about...

Suddenly, two women in their twenties stepped out of the woods they were close to. One of them, whom Toison recognized as one of the Mystic Arts teachers, had fiery red hair; the other had hair the color of tree bark (somehow, just calling it 'brown' seemed inappropriate) and tanned skin, was wearing a rustic looking dress of hand-spun cotton, and had no shoes. They both were strikingly beautiful images of Elven perfection. Moments later, they were joined by Adam's 'aunt', who was muttering something about "get this court bullshit over with."

"Follow us, and do not stray from the path," Ms. Reilly said, "the Grove will allow us passage to our clearing for this special night, and for certain other occasions, but only if we agree to its rules. My sisters await."

Lunch, Crystal Hall, Whateley Academy

For most of the lunch period, Gráinne had felt that she was being watched. The problem for her new warrior-trained instincts was that everyone was being watched in this crazy place; just another irritation in a life that was supposed to be getting better. The other problem was that Sophia was doing her level best to avoid giving whatever it was away.

For all her heightened awareness, the act took her by surprise. A sharp exhalation of air behind and to her left was the mistake she'd been waiting for. She was out of her seat (it landed a few feet away) and on her feet in a flash, kitchen knife in an underhand grip. Her assailant was... not as close as she'd expected, having been halted by the simple expedient of being grabbed by the collar by some other student.

"Wha' t'feckin' hell were ye about t'do to me?"

The short one put his hands up to his neck in the universal sign for "I'm too busy choking to deal with you now".

The taller one said, "Shortstop here was going for your fries, even though he's had too many carbs today."

Was that all that was about, ruining her meal for no fucking reason?

He set the offender back down on his feet. Only now did Gráinne see the white UV band against the boy's white shirt: if he'd provoked her into a brawl over some petty grade-school prank, she'd be on her way to Kane Hall!

"Just... Just get the eedjit away from me."

The next surprise of the meal was that one of the other kids had returned her chair. She checked it for tacks or other noxious pranks before sitting down. The lights in Sophia's eyes were still dancing. What? She turned to see the assailant being perp-walked to the second-level stairs. One of the insanely "Pretty, but I don't want you to think I know it" girls stopped them to hand the little oik something that looked like money. The other face-palmed and walked away from both of them.

"Alright. What did I really miss?"

"That was the third french fry, I think. Either the thunder spirit was slow on the draw, or Kid Death there needed a witness who wouldn't toss him fifteen feet into the nearest lockers."

"Kid... Death?"

"Scrawny, wierd, a few fries short of a Happy Meal, always packs heat, rides a flying skateboard?"

"How did you recognize the other one as a thunder spirit? He does look kind of familiar."

I'd like to know that as well. If he is, he's well masked.

"My grandfather introduced me to the thunderbird, and so I can recognize his kin."

"Already? I thought Thunderbird was a major deal."

"Or, maybe, people have been saying the sixth period Introduction to Magical Theory roster is a Who's Who of people to steer clear of."

"Yes, Mr. Kennedy?" Manya said with a sigh; she was pretty certain what was coming. It was what almost all history teachers wanted to talk about.

As if sensing her ambivalence, he seemed to pull back a bit, but then surprised her by saying, "Don't worry, I'm not going to ask you about your great-grandmother. In fact, she's asked me to tell you that she's proud of how well you're doing."

Stunned, she stammered out in disappointingly poor English, "But how? She has been gone since I was in my crib! You... you are a, a... I do not know the word, a koldun? One who speaks with dead?"

With a smile, he said, "Yeah. Not something I recommend, by the way." He continued, "I have to say I was surprised when she started joining us in the classroom, but then spirits aren't usually constrained by space and time the way most of us living folk are. She's far from the first important historical figure I've met, but she is one of the more surprising ones."

"She did answer a few interesting questions about her employers, however. I'll have to corroborate some of what she said, but you can imagine that someone like Iron Curtain," Maria recalled that this was the name the Americans gave her, translating the Russian codename Stalinya Stena, Steel Wall, with Churchill's politically loaded phrase, "saw and heard a lot of historically significant things during her time as the personal secretary and bodyguard of four different Soviet premiers..."

"Do not try us, Firewalker. We've already dealt with two other supposedly preordained suitors, don't think we won't feed you another poisoned spear if you keep up with this."

With that, Nikki, Grainne, and Elle turned their backs on the flame-wreathed Sidhe prince, whose smirk seemed to say, "Bring it on."

Lunch, a couple of days later,
Euro-Promotional League table, Crystal Hall

Ayla listened to Harley's story, taking note of what was and wasn't said. He interjected into the silence of "this moron said what to Nikki?":

"According to some of my sources, threatening Nikki Reilly with fire makes somewhat less sense than aiming a charged firehose at Riptide."

Several people winced, remembering the underclassman's performance in the combat finals. Setting up a scenario allowing Poseidon's paladin access to working fire hydrants had been sadistic. Denouement's members may have understood that Shenanigan's would handle their own problems, but they sorely underestimated Poe networking. The combat simulations team had been under no such handicap.

Charmer openly mused "I wonder if the Crown Princess of Karedonia was equally impressed?"

"MEDIC!"

"Ah. I suspect that that may have been the answer to my question. Perhaps Lady Constance might be more amenable to his proposal?"

As Victoria and Erin were dragging Elizabeth back to their table, while Becky and Renae did the same with Simone, following yet another of their periodic stare-downs, Ayla turned to Jadis and said, "Why is Judicator so upset that Arachne is using the name of one of her ancient rivals? That's more the sort of thing I would have expected from Counterpoint, not the supposed goddess of wisdom."

A snort from Nacht got both Phase and She-Beast turning to face her, only to see that Kate had returned to her normal impassive countenance. After several awkward seconds, Nacht final relented, saying, "It isn't really the codename thing. Let's just say that Arachne's spirit isn't who she usually says she is, and she and Athena don't get along at all."

Both Jadis and Ayla looked thoughtfully for a moment, before they both whispered, "Australia..." While neither of them knew much about The Dreamtime, they both immediately realized that spiders had to be a big part of the Native culture which existed in Simone's home country, and began scrambling with their smartphones to look up the topic.

"What's crawled up her ass, anyway?", asked Hardbody, pointing to a crying cat girl, with all the tact and subtlety Alice had come to expect from her roommate.

With a sigh, Sagacity explained, "Drama just told her that she heard from Corrosive that Halfback..."

"You mean Shithouse!" came the snipe from someone in the hall. Probably Nantuko; the wealthy Southern psychokinetic had a lot of admirers, but a lot detractors, too, and Fantastico and his crew hated him for some reason.

Alice frowned, then continued, "Anyway, he's the guy Felicitations' been crushing on, right? Well, Bethany said that Corrosive said that Traduce told her that Brett was gay and that he's been banging his roommate Quarterdeck."

"Ah, Drama Queen's the one who ought be in the nuthouse, not those two guys. She's just pissy because 'cause she's dating Half's kid brother."

Alice couldn't disagree; every freshman in school knew that the Pollit brothers - whose parents were famous superheroes in Tennessee - hated each other with a passion. "Yeah, but that doesn't help Maggie..."

Arrivals
(or overtime sometimes is its own punishment)


Ms Carstairs looked the girl, young woman really, over as she sat rigidly on the chair across the small desk. Trying to work out what to do about this ... unusual ... problem that had arrived in her lap. Security had intercepted the girl, heard out her tale and decided that this was a matter for student services. Since she was the only of that staff currently at Schuster hall, it became her problem by default.
Given that the girl represented an unknown quantity one of the security officers was not so casually standing at guard just out of earshot, no doubt overhearing every word that was spoken anyway.

"Did I understand correctly miss ..." she let a silence fall but the girl did not take up the invitation to introduce herself.

With a mostly mental sigh Elaine let it pass. Security had not had much to report before making this her problem, only that the girl had not caved under the pressure of their interrogation either. 'Not cold, exactly' was how it had been phrased 'but rather, an iron spine'. Seeing the girl sit ramrod straight on that uncomfortable chair made her believe it.

"That you walked up to the front gates and demanded to be enrolled in this school?" she continued and both women pretended the silence had never stretched into slightly uncomfortably long.

"This is not how things are done. At any school. We are a private school and we only accept certain students who are a ... good fit for the education we offer."

Anybody who was not familiar with the true nature would have logically concludes that ms Carstairs was politely pointing out that Whateley was a school for privileged rich children and that the girl looked like she had been living rough on the streets for years. Which to be fair, apparently she had.

"You also are quite a bit older than the students who enrol here."

Again, there was a bit of a pause to invite the girl to say more about herself. Elaine thought that this problem really should have gone to Mrs Shugendo, or better yet, to Mrs Hartford. She was not exactly a gopher or clerk, but she had no official authority either, to have an intake meeting that should not happen at all.

The girl narrowed her eyes and gave the minutest shake of her head as if she had come to some conclusion herself, though ms Carstairs did not notice, not having the kind of experience that came from dealing with teenagers trying to cover up their misdeeds.

"I have a name," she said her voice soft and measured. With a strange lilt to it that spoke of an accent that was almost trained out of her but not yet quite. "but if you are going to kick me out again, you do not need to know it. And it would be better for everybody if you didn't."

The girl paused, perhaps to gauge how her words were received or to try and read a reaction of how this would play out.

"I also know of Whateley and that I meet the most important and secret qualification."

To emphasize she gave her head a little shake and both ms Carstairs and the security guard had to suppress a shudder of discomfort. Mutants often had strange hair and eye colours as a result of their activation, but this girl's hair was not just black, not even pitch black in a way that human hair could not be. It was as if light itself did not want to touch her hair; turning it the black of the absence of everything in a way that the void of space did not quite achieve. As she shook her head after images of her hair broke off and then evaporated into wisps of black smoke that quickly evaporated.
Her eyes had the same afterimage effect, and were even harder to look at for more than a few seconds. While it was not immediately obvious that the girl was a mutant, it would not remain a secret for long with anybody who looked at her.

Elaine wove that aside. She was not going to decide on this anyway, only if she should direct it higher up or if she should dismiss this girl. Which, she realised, she could not do. Dismissing her from Whately that was. The girl knew about the school so at the very least both security and Mrs Hartford would want to know how she had learned about the school and why she had walked, God knew how long, to get here. If she had heard from a hero he or she would have at least warned the school, if not sponsored the girl instead of allowing her to walk across the country for months. Most super villains, except for them most psychotic black mage's and deranged devisors, would have done the same, and the later would not have let the girl walk away.

Ms Carstairs did not know how to proceed. Students simply did not arrive at school without the proper paperwork, background checks and so on being done first and approval had to be obtained from parents or legal guardians. The MCO after all would love nothing more than credibly accuse the school of kidnapping minors.

"I can fill out your forms," the girl offered. "if that lets me stay here."

Elaine almost jumped at the 'out' that she was offered.

"Not that the nice rent-a-cops did not make it clear that they didn't want me to leave."

Elaine bit her lips and decided that this situation had to go way above her pay grade. Mrs Shugendo was out of state and could not be reached. Security clearly already had vetted the girl and decided that she was not exactly a security risk but also could not be allowed to leave without some kind of leash on her. And she refused to call back Mrs Hartford and subject herself to years of the woman's enmity. Which left only one person and she likely was already on her way to school if security was its usual efficient self. Maybe not, the officer was from the third platoon and that had a bit of a reputation.

"I can make no promises," she finally said to the girl. "But filling out an admission form that I can let you do. Do you have a name we should call you?"

Perhaps the direct request paired with a hint of cooperation would get the girl to open up more.

"I go by the name Pandora these days," she said. Whispered really.

"You have a code name?"

The girl grimaced fleetingly. "It is not a code name. More like a warning."

"A warning?" Ms Carstairs felt chilled and the security officers visibly tensed behind the girl's back.

"Do not take the box away from the nice girl. Very bad things will happen if you take the box away."

Somewhere in near Skyrne, Count Meath, Republic of Ireland

The stone was tall, perhaps two and a half meters, and it was old. A ringed walkway surrounded it as smaller pieces of slate fitted in three rows splayed outward like a sunburst from it's base. Anyone who saw the stone would say its just a rock, and that's what it was. Centuries ago, the High Kings of Ireland declared themselves a this rock, and from this they claimed their marriage to the land.

A woman, dressed in dark blue evening dress was the only one upon the hill, and she was not happy to see that rock. Its lone rough surface was visibly marred by blade strikes and pitted with age. Her hair was the color of sable, and her eyes the deepest blue one could think of. As she drew closer her dress swirled around her ankles as her ballet flats shuffled in the short green grass.

"Ai know yer in dere Fódla," she hissed. Her eyes narrowing as she snarled. Sharpened teeth whiter than ivory revealed to the new day as she took three steps towards the rock.

"Yer laid dere ye bitch, an' now, aim hare dancin!" she chortled. Her hair swung widely around as her curved figure moved with almost inhuman precision.

"And there's nuttin ye can do." She chortled as she twirled around letting her dress flight around her legs. Pale skin the color of alabaster gleamed as her legs moved to a beat only found in her head. Her foot work rattled onward as if dancing to a phantom bodhran or hand drum. Upon finishing she stood before the stone and pressed her hand to it. A flush of essence poured from her form as the stone vibrated and a spiral emblem appeared on it's surface.

""Beidh an Chùirt Gheimhridh agat, mo chol ceathar, go luath!" she crooned to the stone. As cracks of energy began to slowly seep away from the spiral.

"Go han-luath!" she growled.

Carson strode through Doyle medical complex ICU, until she came to a room with the lights out. Inside the room the young man was awake, and in pain. Just fresh off the butchers block of the spring Combat Final. He would be out in a few days, as with most of the other students here. A graceful combination of medicine, magic, and his own regeneration factor. Hence the pain and knowing that, Carson strode in. Turning on the lights, and shutting the door in one fluid motion.

"Hello, Mr. Jaeger. I watched your Combat Final today. I watched your lackluster performance, and I wondered how a veteran of that many wars and conflicts could survive, with such poor combat skills." Carson grilled the patient in the bed. "Then it all clicked, you were helping your opponent. Your rival, Johnathan Tremblay. I thought you had a feud with him, so please clarify, why you intentionally sabotaged your future in this school for a young man who you hate."

"I don't hate him." Max grumbled through what remaining teeth he had. "Not any more."

"Oh, so your feud is over now. Just like that." Carson continued to sear the boy. "Was it the absolute thrashing he gave you in the arena, because you let that happen."

"I let it happen, because I know EVERYTHING!" He gasped out, the monitor beeping to his rising heart rate.

"What do you know..." Carson asked, her eye narrowing.

"I know, Naomi and Johnathan...are the same person." Max coughed. "I know you signed the no contact form with the in loco parentis powers that Whateley has. I know that you use your Headmaster power to protect the Poe Cottage."

"What do you plan on using that knowledge for, Mr. Jaeger? Leverage? You'll find blackmailing Whately is not a wise move." Carson's gaze that could melt ICBM's in flight settled on the boy. Who only started at the ceiling.

"Nothing." He replied as if sloughing off a huge weight.

"Nothing, Nothing." Carson repeated before continuing. "Your year long feud with Jonathan ends with this revelation that he was your sister. The one you crawled out of wars to find, and then you find out that I protected him from you. I hate to say it Mr. Jaeger, but with your predisposition to violence I think that you're lying to me."

"I'm tired." was Max's only response.

"Tired of what?" His answer had pique Carson's interest.

"Of fighting." he sighed. "At first I was angry, I felt my blood boil. When I put it all together. Then...Then it hit me. How didn't I notice? How much had I forgotten about my own sister? How much was wiped away when Rhodie got in my head?" Max paused to sob. "And how could a great person like that. A person that wants to save people be even remotely related to me. A killer, a violent angry, killer." The sobs turned into painful cries.

Carson was unsure of what to say at this moment so she just held her tongue. Offering only the comfort of human contact to the boy, before speaking. "I have seen many killers Max, many. With that knowledge I can safely say you are no killer. Killers enjoy what they do. You may have done things, but those were out of survival. Those things, that you still refuse to talk about, they are your bane. They will destroy you if you allow them. You need to speak to someone."

Max only shook his head no. His jaw clenched, tears still streaming down his face.

"I can help you Max, only if your help yourself." Carson pleaded with the boy squeezing his hand. Only to be met with more silence. Patting the boys hand Carson began to take her leave to set up appointments with the counseling department.

"Mustard and Chlorine Gas. It was used on us, and with Rhodie appointing me head medic I had to preform triage. I had to value who could be saved and who couldn't. All of them, I had to look at all of them. I had to remove any personal connections, and make a decision." Max forced the words out like molasses.

"I'm sure you saved all you could." Carson said clenching her fists.

"I didn't save enough" Max's words burned with self hatred. "I didn't save Regis."

"I'm sure he, knows you did everything you could."

"I don't know if she did."

"She." Carson corrected herself seeing the jigsaw pieces of Max's life in a new light. "She did Max. She did."

Dickinson Cottage, Early November 2016, Afternoon

Viola redid her makeup for the third time today, and thankfully for once, her idiot roommate Darcy was still in class, instead of humming to herself and chatting with her bitch friends or babbling on and on and on about some other girl's hair.

Viola took a deep breath. She wouldn't let thinking about Darcy ruin today for her.

A couple of deft strokes and she had finished her eye liner. It was lighter and meant to blend into her skin tone. She was aiming for about eighteen today, far older than her real fifteen. Natural, not overdone, invisible even. Professional.

The internship she had hoped for was starting today!

Daddy…no her father…didn't think it was right for her. Viola frowned deeply, pausing in her routine.

She'd overheard her parents talking at the beginning of the year. About her. They were arguing. Her mother argued it would be fine after some counseling maybe even a few sessions with Dr. Bennett, her mother's therapist. Father said from his professional opinion, being a nurse was impossible for Viola. She "lacked empathy." He wanted to stop her from her dream. That it would never happen. Which was bullshit of course. She had aced her CPR training in Girl Scouts!

Well, Daddy was wrong, and when she manifested a few months later, Viola knew she had been right. She was destined to help others. But their interference ended that same day. Viola was on her own now, and they could rot for all she cared. Her father hadn't defended her when her mother lost her fucking shit and tried to kill her.

Viola glanced over to the box under Darcy's bed. The random gadgets and devices that would fund her education after the grants to attend Whateley were done. Med school. "Clinical detachment," was what you were after if you were a doctor, right? Nurse? Doctor? What's the difference when you had an exemplar brain?

Whateley was the perfect place for someone like her. Dr. Tenent, one of the best healers on the continent, worked here. And she was a magic user too! But Viola would have to work her way up to that first. No rush. She had four years, and there were plenty of other students in the way for now. The Headmaster himself had approved her internship application!

A little finishing spray, a quick sloppy bun secured with a huge clip, and Viola shimmied out of uniform's skirt and into the tailored scrubs she'd had that woman in town fix up. The cargo pants were fitted to show off the curves she did have, but also were still loose or flexible enough for whatever the clinic staff asked her to do. A matching top and a carefully maneuvered pullover kept her makeup pristine and her hair functional. Also tailored. She dashed out the door, down the stairs, out of the cottage and off toward Doyle.

Viola breezed through the doors in high spirits and practically skipped to the reception desk.

"I'm Viola Hartigan, I mean-"

The receptionist held up a hand, "No need for codenames today Miss Hartigan, we'll all know you're coming. I'll page Clifton for you. You can wait here if you like, or have a seat in the waiting area."

"I'll wait!"

"Good to see some enthusiasm from a student around here instead of the regular glum or grim faces."

Minutes passed and a tall man with deeply tanned skin, and what she assumed was a permanent grin slathered on his face strode up to her and introduced himself.

"Viola Hartigan? Clifton Smithfield, paramedic."

"Can you, could you call me Viola?"

"Sure. I'll go over the details the program while we walk to my station."

Clifton ran through the expectations of the internship. She would shadowing him and a few of the other medics for the first two weeks, largely be on clipboard duty in the first few days, before they would let her do some of the routine and simple checks like temperatures, but they weren't going to let her check blood pressures. She would practice on the medics during downtimes and they might let her do wraps if she passed.

Viola would be rotated through each of the areas in Doyle until the end of the Spring semester, typically in support duties due to her age and lack of any formal certifications. After that, the Doyle staff would assess her performance with Dr. Mazarin and Dr. Tenent would personally provide the recommendation whether or not they wanted to extend Viola's internship over the summer and then into the fall. Viola had every intention of making sure that happened. She didn't really have anywhere else to go anyway.

"Any questions for me?" Clifton asked.

"I heard you are a veteran?" Viola had picked it up somewhere and already knew the answer.

He laughed. "Nothing like Pararescue, but yes, I was the combat medic for my unit. Glad to be out of it, to be honest, though I thought working for a private school would be a lot less exciting than it is. It's probably going to be harder on you, helping patch up your friends, but I know the feeling."

That wouldn't really be a problem. She didn't have any friends. Just her boyfriend Andrew. Viola responded with a calculated laugh before shuffling her feet awkwardly. "So…should I practice or read something?"

"No. It's seventh period, and you were right on time so I got through all the orientation bits. We'll get a call any minute now."

"Huh?"

As if the Gods themselves answered her, a soft thump could be heard through the walls. Likely shaking buildings across the whole campus. The intercom blared and requested an immediate response and for the nurses to prep any available rooms.

"Like I said, it's seventh period."

Viola just stared at him blankly.

"It means that a certain Miss Myoujin is in Mrs. Braithwaite's Home-Ec class. Let's go kiddo."

Somewhere past the looking glass, in the late 1700s.

A woman with skin the color of alabaster and dressed in leine the color of indigo. Her dress tunic flowed around her body as she ran barefoot down a vaguely laid forest path. Tall thick and black barked oaks lined the path as their long leafless branches reached out toward the sky. The woman's skin was so pale it almost appeared bluish in the tint it held. Even her lips were blue, and as she ran she panted revealing sharpened predatory teeth. Resting for a stop she leaned against a large dark color rowan tree and shivered at the increasing cold of the forest around her. Each nail on her fingers and toes were blackened and dark. Every one ending in a fierce-looking point.

"Dammit, why is his fort so far!" she croaked. Her eyes opened wide dark-blue sclera and green pupils hinting at her alien nature. She flicked her hand and sent a chill wind spinning in front of her as the essence whipped out as an extension of her will. The wind spun faster until a small dervish began to pick up the dead leaves littering her way.

Again she ran down the path. This time twisting and turning as bushes and underbrush threaded the path back and forth again. A small glen caused her to jump as she sailed over the dent in the path's level and landed on the other side. Only gentry could show such vigor in the lands of winter, and only one born of the cold could travel so quickly. The dervish danced in front of her kicking up the leaves so that her path was clear. A few roots from the massive forest trees caused her to watch her footing and finally after an hour of running she arrived.

The fort was simple. A large tall wall made out of thick rocks fitted together and reinforced by a wooden palisade. Her eyes narrowed as she walked toward the gate where a single sentry stood.

"I come to call upon the King," she growled.

"Lady!" the lesser spoke as the guard shook in place. He was pale like her, but had tufted ears like a lynx. The smaller body also reinforced his lesser status as she towered over him in all her glory.

"Yes, open the gate, for one of the blood has come!" she growled. The guard shuffled in his high conical helm and brass colored scale armor. His nearly barefeet made no noice as he banged his small buckler against the door.

"Open! Open and make way, the Lady has come! Daughter of Branwen, and Lady of the Isles!" called the sentry as the large wooden door began to creak open.

"Finally, I can speak to the old bastard," she murmured under her breath."

Walking past Mischief, who was still outside the room sitting up against the hallway wall crying, Liz Carson strode into the 'secret' studio where she found Imp, sitting on a stool before an unfinished painting. Tears in her eyes, she groaned, "I... she wasn't supposed to see me this way! I actually told her I'd need the room to myself for a few hours and not to disturb me! I..." with a sigh, she added contritely, "I guess I brought this on myself, didn't I?"

"We all make mistakes, Christine. What I want to know is, why couldn't this have waited until you were back at your studio in New York?"

Imp stood up, leaving her 'paint brush' dangling from the harness at her waist. "Sometimes inspiration is the strangest thing. I mean, I'd heard of Pricasso 's work before, but for some reason, seeing the painting Miss Good'n'plenty brought in just sorta got me thinking, and the next thing I knew..."

"Archy," interjected the hot sophomore in a boys' style uniform as she passed their table.

"Huh?" chittered Paul, as they all turned to look at her.

"I overheard what you were saying about the codename 'Samsa' already being taken. If you want a different literary reference which is just as appropriate, try 'Archy the Roach' from archy and mehitabel, which was series of magazine columns in which they were used as a foil for discussing society in the 1910s and 1920s." The older student then walked away with an air of aloofness.

Those unfamiliar with "The Braeburn Report" may want to read (or re-read) it either before or after reading this one.

"OK, I can see why everyone's so upset about this, I mean, I know that the twins are pretty mature for young kids, but..."

Dr. Cody nodded, then after a moment of thought added, "Yes, but there's more to it than just that. There's Braeburn's Rule to consider, and from what we've seen, they fit the pattern." After a moment, he continued, "I doubt you've heard of that before, though. Braeburn's Rule is a rule of thumb which says that, statistically, the younger someone manifests, the more likely that they will be in the higher power categories. The going theory is that the relationship is in the other direction, actually, and that the higher a mutant's potential, the more likely they are to manifest young."

"Oh." Laura said in a flat tone, somewhat stunned.

Looking at the student he was speaking to more closely, Wyatt added, "There's something you might want to know about that yourself, even if it doesn't apply to you directly. The rule about age is actually a corollary to Braeburn's Rule. When he first proposed the rule in 1998, Dr. Braeburn was studying GSD - GSD in the informal sense, I mean, you know, some change where the mutant's body is distinctly different from a baseline - and specifically why it is often linked to higher power levels. He suggested that high power levels often cause the body to modify itself to accommodate the power being put through it. It relates a bit to Avatar mismatches, though that idea came later."

"Uh, OK... but what's that got to do with me? My GSD isn't that unusual, and I'm not really up there in terms of power..."

"Because of something which happened later," he explained. "Ten years ago, Steve Braeburn mysteriously disappeared, and then about six months after that, an unpublished paper started circulating among researchers which some said was the last project he'd been working on. Supposedly, some of his colleagues in the MCO confirmed that it matched the notes he'd left behind, though apparently most of his records had been destroyed at the same time he'd gone missing. It had several new proposals which were pretty damn controversial. A lot of people don't agree with the final conclusion of the paper, but the basic thesis was that gender changes also can reflect a higher power level, especially if the changeling wasn't transgender before they manifested. There's a fair amount of evidence to support that idea."

"But... oh! That's why Mrs. Horton seems so concerned about there being so many of us at once?"

"Part of the reason, yes, though what happened the last time there was a large number of changelings might be a bigger part of it, honestly. I was still a student here when that happened, and I could tell you some stories..."

“Oh Pancakes and Strawberries,” my wife swore. She practically never swore.

“That bad?”

“The worst!” Lynette was perched over a scrying bowl with her cat-horse hybrid familiar, Dirxexs. Images only the two of them saw swirled in the purple mist of the bowl. I was sure that I saw a gryphon in there once, years ago, but Lynette said she was looking at a hostage situation in a bank and that anything that resembled gryphons didn’t exist in our dimension anymore.

“Well, who can handle it? Kimmie or Delilah?”

My wife wasn’t in her working uniform. She was on maternity leave for our first child, due in less than a month. The frill, ribbon, and lace-loaded black dress with gold accents was currently on a dress-form getting repaired and maintained.

“They’re both on another mission. “

Lynette and Dirxexs looked on helplessly into the bowl. I went back to the living room to grab my phone. I dialed a very long set of numbers and returned to Lynette’s casting chamber. She turned back to me, puzzled. The line connected.

“Halmeoni?” I said and my wife’s eyes narrowed.

“Let me guess,” my grandmother answered in English. “Your cutesy mage-wife incapable of handling something on her own? I told your mother I should have at least taught you the old ways too! But she said, ‘Nooooo, Danny smarter than that. He’s going to be a scientist!’ Don’t worry, I’ll call her too.”

“Lynn is pregnant, not helpless!”

A chuff of disapproval was all that came back before the line disconnected.

“She’s on her way,” I told Lynette.

She looked at me with a mix of fear and shame before turning to her familiar. “Pancakes and Waffles!” Thankfully everything throwable was out of range, and Dirxexs had secured the scrying bowl with his mouth.

Sorry, I had this one stuck in my mind and had to unload it.

Kate sat down on the bench in the quad next to Ryan with a deep sigh.

"Power testing?" Ryan asked.

Kate just nodded.

"And?" Ryan prodded.

"I'm useless, " she said. I have some energizer traits but can't generate or absorb energy. I have PK fields, but they can barely lift grains of sand.

"Welcome to the Underdogs," Ryan said. "The others should arriv..."

Ryan didn't manage to finish his sentence as he got knocked of the bench.

"You're in my spot nerd," the muscle bound boy said. "You, skinny girl, move. That's my buddies seat.'

Kate just fumed. She was just dismissed by a power testing team that really didn't show any care for her or her feeble powers. They just rushed the tests. She was away from anybody she trusted and now this bully. Then she glanced at Ryan and saw him laying on his side. There was blood on his head. She didn't know if he was just hit or worse, but it sent her anger into the red zone

She jumped off the bench and glared at the guy. Her power flared responding to her anger. Her tiny feeble force fields started grabbing sand and little bits of grit and floating them up.

This caused the bully to laugh at her and taunt her: "What's the little girl going to do? Throw sand at me? Ha!"

This caused Kate's anger to go deeper into the red. Her entire face contorted in anger and all her muscles clenched. Her force fields started pick up more dirt from the ground and squeeze them causing to break some bits of grits to very fine dust. Then her power latched on to a little puddle. When her field tried to crush the water, the pressure peaked momentary and was high enough to actually split of some hydrogen and fuse them into helium.

The fusion caused a little flash but most of the power generated went back into the field. On instinct she squeezed the drop of water harder, causing some more hydrogen atoms to fuse. More fields now picked up water and started the fusion process, causing an aura of light to play around Kate now. She could actually feel the overwhelming pressure the thousand little fields were now exerting on the water and the immense energy generated barely contained in the fields. It just hurt but her anger was greater. She released this with a long primal scream.

The bully didn't like this development and took a few step towards Kate to stop here. On instinct she now did what she had been trying for a long time. The excess energy generated by the bubbles of fusion flowed toward her, powering her energizer trait and feeding it back to the her PK field. For the first time her PK had enough power to cover her body and she used it to punch the guy. The exemplar five flew back several feet and landed hard.

"Okay lady, no more mister nice guy!" he shouted after getting up and started to run towards Kate.

Kate now had only a few seconds before he would ram her at full force. She put her hands together and quickly created a field the size of a marble an used different other fields to grab air and water and feed it into the marble. This gave the effect of having sparkling streamers flowing into her hands, where a small ball of bright blue plasma formed, grew and ignited to again fuse more atoms together. Water vapor was split into hydrogen. Hydrogen fused to helium. Some helium even reached the second stage and fused together. The bright light in her hands quickly grew to unbearable levels, searing the inside of the PK field on the edge of failing to keep the energy in check and sending overwhelming pain signals to Kate, that she countered with an anger reaching higher levels than the nuclear reactions happening between her hands. With one last scream of anger and pain she released the energy in a bright beam of blue and white plasma towards the charging bully.

She missed. They bully dove to the side. But it didn't matter. Every nerve in the guy's body screamed out to get away from the unnatural heat. He who hasn't felt any pain since he manifested now passed out from the pain. He fell next to Ryan on the ground. Kate just fell to her knees, completely exhausted and spent. In that position they staid until security arrived, followed by a number of scientists that had seen many alarms go off from their detectors and just needed to investigate this.

Warning: possible controversy

A group of teenagers was standing in front of their new dorm while one senior approached. There was a lot of whispering and rumours buzzing in this group.

"Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to Whateley Academy. I'm Claire and will be your guide for today."

The buzzing and whispering just got a lot louder.

Clair sighed deeply. This was to be expected so she gave in to the inevitable. The usual speech would have to wait a bit.

"Let's start with introductions first. Please start," she said while waving to a girl with pigtails.

"Hello everybody," the girl said stiffly as she had rehearsed this. "As you may have guessed, I am indeed Greta Thunberg."

The buzzing increased again with the other student's whispering. Greta waited until it subsided and continue. "I had a few problems with the customs about my unusual way of travel," she said while making air quotes. The MCO got involved. "

A few students made angry noises towards the mention of the MCO.

"Anyway, they tested me for mutant powers and discovered I am actually a precog."

The other students were done whispering and just started shouting questions.

Greta stoically waited, pointed at another student and said: "You with the red T shirt. Name, power and question please."

Somewhere Beyond the Looking Glass

"Father, are you kidding me?" asked the blonde-haired girl. Her eerie red eyes watched the redhaired man in front of her as he was rubbing his chin in contemplation. His entire body was lazily strung above the throne of his own long-deceased father. A broken short-handled hammer was set into the high back of the throne with a large wolf and a serpent skull built to form the arm rests.

"No, I am not, Kolla," he smiled. Vali's eyes were glowing dark red, and their black sclera only seemed to emphasize their ember like nature. Two massive tall guards stood on either side of the throne, giants, massive folk who served the line of Utgard since the First Death.

"You want me to help that stupid wench from the Winter?" Kolla huffed in annoyance. Her hands tangled together as she rolled her eyes.

"She asks for help, we help, just as she helped you when Thorsdottir killed your mother," his lips formed into a hard scowl.

"FINE!" she sighed as her long blonde hair shifted exaggeratedly with each movement.

"You will help, and I will let you bring back a pet," he told her. His daughter's coak black eyes opened wide as the briefest hint of dark blue pupils tracked his movements.

"Thank you ever so much father! Where am I to go?" she asked finally relenting her defiance. Her smile brightened further as he told her of her destination.

Lunch time, Euro-Promotional League table, Crystal Hall

Kolla was set aback at the variety of people bustling about the large cafeteria. There were nearly as many odd shapes and sizes as one might expect at a feast among the ettins of Utgard or the Fomorians of Eire to the west. Less surprising, the more unusual or even ugly were relegated to the lowest platform in the feast hall. And yet there was something familiar here that drew her attention inwards and up. She told her guide that she had to say hello to an old friend, but they'd meet back up soon after.

On the second platform, there was a table filled with as normal a group of teens as could be had here and in this age. She sighed at hearing many of them speak in the slurred language of the Franks. Hadn't that people lost enough of their wars yet? Whoever it was among them, one of them was known to her. Not recognizing a face at first, she altered her path to come from another direction. There he was! His face was younger, less guarded - no difficulty that - but the world's life-currents flowed through and around him in a familiar way.

< Father. What are you doing here? Do you not trust me to aid the Winter bitch without supervision? >

Mads turned to see the newcomer, then back to Thomas and smiled his toothiest sharklike grin, "Father? I have to hear how this happened. < Take a seat, girl, and tell us all about how he had time to take a wife and raise a child. > For now, he commanded his pistol back to safe mode.

Kolla marked the blond stranger's sing-song accent, one that hinted of originating from time among the Swedes, and sniffed the air as if it had offended her.

< Perhaps I should, but only because I can tell that you are known to my father. I am Kolla Valadóttir >

"Enchanté, a bien sûr. I am called Mads Christian Møller-Jensen, and Baby Daddy here is known as Thomas Hrafn Jensen."

"Call me 'baby daddy' again, and we're going to have a quick-and-very-dirty check of your electrical resistance."

< You two seem terribly familiar with each other. If you must know, it is simple: not everyone in the Vigrid field died that day many years earlier >

Thomas interrupted her on that point. < Depending on your calender, Year 536 of the Christian Era, and Vali would have been in no position to take to the field on any side. The Norse, Irish, Scots and Britons alike, were sorely reminded of that time when the crops failed again and again around 951. Hekla had been bad enough the previous century, but the massive eruptions of Katla, Hveravellir, and even Ljósufjöll, only added insult to injury. >

< As I said, ancient history. > Turning back to Mads, < Finally my father came after the war. He searched and found a wife among Útgarðar. Maybe when you've grown into a bearded man, someone will explain the mysteries of marital relationships to you. >

Thomas choked on his water over the effort spent to avoid spraying the table. There was some laughter at his expense.

Kolla chose to ignore the unseemly behavior. If her father wished to bury himself that deeply in some stupid role... his father was Odin Grimnir after all. < In any case, years later, a rather annoying cow of the Winter Court helped me avenge my mother's death, so I must in turn help her in her time of need. >

Mads nodded. < Some debts cannot be forgiven once ignored. The Winter Court aren't the only sticklers on that point. >

< He would know, > Thomas added.

< How so? >

< Would a nobleman of the Summer Court want Hela Lokadóttir's contact information written among his contacts even if his half-brother... >

Mads butted back in. < Lineal half-brother, with lots of generations in-between >

< Whatever. Take that up with him. >

< He's yours too! >

< Anyway! He knew better than to hand that to you. >

< She gave it to me, after pointing out she could get a copy of our grades any time she chose to check up on us. >

< That made it a Sorceror's Contract, you jerk! >

The jerk shrugged. < Seemed fair enough. >

This was making less and less sense by the minute.

< Who ARE you two? > Kolla demanded of the two fools.

< Just two regular guys trying to keep one foot out of the grave. >

"On what hypothetical planet are you considered 'a regular guy'?"

< Just, stop. Why did you lead me on in believing this impostor was my father? >

Mads held up a finger 'Wait one' while mentally passing a long connection code to his comm. At the sound of an antique ring tone, he passed it over to the upset girl, < We never said we wouldn't help, nor that we would. Before we discuss that, I think you two ladies need to talk.>

Feel free to ignore this, since my Guests stories are basically a crossover-cum-spin-off for which I borrowed Metro and Valravn earlier. I just felt I needed to stick Spindrifter into the middle of things.

As Kolla was taking the device, a blonde girl walked up to the table, and began, "Hey, Tom, Ed wanted to know.... <you!>" she hissed in Norwegian, staring at the newcomer. The girl swept her arms back, and magical energy began to coruscate around her hands.

Kolla stood up, ready for a fight. <"How...? What brings you to this place, Kurudredsdottir? Come to fight me again?">

<"You were the one who sought me out!">

<"I did nothing of the sort!">

New York City
2017-01-20

The Mek representative stood before the UN Security Council, waiting for them to review the information they had given them. It's always a problem dealing with primitive cultures like this, especially when done in secret. However, they knew that if word of this got out to the ones they were there for, the consequences would be far-reaching, well beyond this tiny world with its oddly powerful inhabitants.

"I am aware that our worlds do not have any standing agreements on these matters, but I am afraid this is necessary to protect not just your world, but dozens of others. These criminals have been a problem for tens of thousands of your world's stellar revolutions, and fighting against Mi-Go pirates and slavers was one of the driving forces for our Union's formation. I assure you, it is in your world's best interest to allow us to extradite them as quickly and quietly as possible, as it is likely that an armed intervention will become necessary if not."

The representative from the region awkwardly named 'The United States of America' spoke up first. "You can't be serious about this! She's the president-elect, she's scheduled to be sworn in only days from now!"

"From what I have studied of your government, only those who are native citizens of your landmass are eligible for this office, correct?" They polished their outer integument a bit, an old nervous habit, then pointed to the picture of a well-known Alaskan politician. "Despite their appearances, none of these people are human at all. Every single candidate in your recent election was one who had been replaced by a Mi-Go operative decades ago, which had been arranged by this one," pointing now to the picture of Piet von der Geest of the MCO, "in order to facilitate the trafficking of empowered humans to serve as mercenaries across the galaxy."

They continued, "I am aware that your governments are unfamiliar with regional politics, but surely you must have suspected something? I'm no judge of humans, but I've been told that this 'Geest' appears to be far younger than their official age would suggest..."

Mads stood up, feet precisely shoulder-width apart, knees slightly bent, chin lowered to focus sight and hearing, the earlier smile falling away like blood from a severed artery. A short command relayed to the comm unit put it on speaker. Aloud, he went with:

"Marandi. You will desist. Now."

"This is none of your business!"

"I am under oath as a member of Security, and you have had your warning."

The air hung with the smell of damp tree-moss, rusted nails, smoke, and dying flesh.

"Do I need to repeat myself?"

A voice, both youthful and crone-like, fresh and eery, cast itself into hearing. Later, it would prove to be immune from recording.

< Mads, are you planning to send new residents to my halls? >

< I was planning to introduce and ask you to explain some family matters to the daughter of Utgard-Valí, but we were interrupted. >

< Kolla? Of course I know of her. She would not be there without good reason, so turn off the speaker, little brother, and I'll attempt to explain you two cubs. >

The distraction was sufficient to give the Betas time to respond. Mindbird, usually one to talk the opposing factions down, hung back some distance. Metro's presence could be appalling at the best of times. When provoked? It was interesting to her who was and who wasn't bothered. Cytherea favored her with a conspiratorial wink. Her own brother was no less of a pest at times. He could do worse than be introduced to the hotheaded sorceress.

After watching his latest target walk away with a swish of her tail, Nephandus put a hand to the cheek she'd slapped, only to be alarmed on finding that her claws had drawn blood. As he fled to find a mirror larger than the one he carried, the ladies of the Bad Seeds all rolled their eyes.

Finally, Winter decided to try some cattiness of her own, saying, "Well, it seems that Little Miss Poor Life Choices has some ability to resist the opposite sex after all. Maybe if we steer her towards Corrosive she'll learn the same lesson about women?"

Lindsey, aghast, said, "That's not fair! She's nice enough, I mean, yeah, she's sort of forward and, uhm, anyway, she's obviously got a problem, so..."

Jadis stepped in to try and make peace. "Linds is right, you know. I hear that she's seeing Dr Traekham regularly because of it. We probably should cut her some slack, after all she's one of us."

Nacht retorted, "I hope you aren't going to say we need to be kinder to Jay-Arm next."

"No, because all his problems are self-inflicted. He needs the ribbing just to help keep his head on straight." Turning back to Marian, she added, "Also, this is not the first time Lisa has turned someone down. Just the other day..."

"Was that before or after she tried to molest my cousin?" sneered Jobe.

Sighing, She-Beast glared and said, "That's an exaggeration, Mandy was able to tell her to back off and got her to listen, and besides it was before that anyway. She..."

"Word has been getting around, and it's brought some real creeps out of the woodwork," Nacht interjected. "She's a PDP, so when she bothers to, she can read the intentions off the major sleazeballs."

With another sigh, Jadis added, "Thanks for that, Kate. But yeah, that's pretty much on the money. Trev told me that she got into a fight in Poe with some guy called Stoner, and from what he told me about him, I can't blame her for not wanting to be his latest toy." Both Fina and Alex nodded in agreement to this. Continuing, she added, "She also turned down Counterpoint, with the whole 'fighting is sex, sex is fighting' thing of his, ugh."

"At least that got June off of Lisa's back after that thing with Jason..." Dragonrider murmured half-heartedly. They all noted that hitting on an angry goddess when she is in the middle of a jealous tantrum wasn't a good idea, either.

"Lillebror?" escaped Kolla's mouth before she could think twice about its meaning.

"What, Kolken? Don't you think I'd know who was calling me? It's the twenty-first century after all."

Kolla shivered at the sound of the frosted voice, feeling as though someone had trespassed her future barrow.

The voice continued, "When you get to my age, you'll learn that the number of generations don't matter much."

"Are you saying that these are the Vali and Narfi of old Asgard?"

If looks could kill, Kolla would be bleeding out at the hands of those two. Two other boys at the table looked confused as they tried to parse the archaic tongue of their ancestors. Those were Not Her Problem.

Kurudredardóttir's eyes widened. Thomas and Mads had always gone out of their way to dispel that rumor!

Bitch, please. Kolla thought before returning her attention to the call.

"Not in the manner you are thinking. My half-brothers' hugur were destroyed to bind our parent. However, be we jötunn, áss, vanr, alfr, dvergr, mann, we are the people of humanity's Dreams and subject to their Stories. A skald entwined Narfi Halfdan's and Vali Wulfhereson's hugur with my brothers' hamingjar for his own purposes. Years later, later here we all are."

"That's... odd."

"That's the technical version. All you need to worry about is the fact that they are to be treated as kin."

"Perhaps, but as you say they are essentially human and thus of no use to me."

"One might say so. Have you any further questions that I might choose to answer?"

"No. I'm surely in enough debt as it stands."

"I'll be seeing you later, then."

A skeletal hand set the reciever back on its cradle. A pity she never thought to ask which sleeper Dreams humanity into being. Its owner shook her head and smiled. ...nor the price of knowledge she'd had eyes to see for herself.

Kolla handed the unfamiliar farspeaking talisman back to its owner, who folded it in his left hand and pocketed it.

< Satisfied? >

Stormwolf cleared his throat. Who did these people think was in charge here? "Metro, does she speak English or are we going to need an interpreter to file our reports?"

"I do speak English. It's a poor cousin to my native tongue, but I suppose it will serve. Also, I am Kolla Valadóttir, not 'she'."

"Then please come along with us to Kane Hall, Miss Valadaughter, so we can get this all documented properly. Metro, finish whatever that is on your plate. I don't need another lecture from Caduceus regarding your prescribed diet."

Firecat winked and said, quietly enough to just carry a few feet, "The Doc promised pictures the next time it comes up."

late Tuesday afternoon, August 23, 2016,

Temple Terrace, Florida

"... Baruch atah, Adonai, m'kadeish HaShabbat."

"Amen."

JB looked up from the siddur, visibly steeling himself for the Chazan's critique. The man's "amen" sounded too relieved to his ear.

"James. I think that will be enough for this week. Yes, the trope still needs practice, but no more today or tomorrow! Your voice is too hoarse for pushing."

"But..." JB's family was paying for these lessons, and his call to the Torah was coming up sooner and sooner.

"But nothing. Your face is flushed and you're stumbling over parts you already know. I have another appointment this afternoon, or I'd drive you home myself!"

"Yes, sir."

"You could work more on the convincing too. Go on! Remember to bring your family for Saturday services!"
Heading home on his bicycle, JB was certain the only thing worse than coming down with whatever crud was going around was coming down with it in the ninety-degree heat of Central Florida's late summer. If he took some back streets, he could ease off on his pace and take the time to go over his Torah portion in his head. When he was younger, having a birthday that coincided with the beginning of the annual cycle of Torah readings felt special. Coming up on thirteen, the accurate word was 'ominous'. They really didn't need to have any more than enough people for a minyan, did they?

Maybe if he came down with Space Rabies, or Rigellian Fever, or something, it would thin out the crowd?

He liked biking through the older neighborhoods around town. It was cooler in the shade, even if he had to keep an eye out for kids trying to get run over, and for drivers pulling out blind because they couldn't see through their own landscaping.


University of the Exalted Hord of Precious Knowledge

Leleth had already been a miserable week, and the forecast called for more of the same. Which is to say: she was still in graduate school and trying to cajole funding and department resources to allow her to spend the next term or two conducting her required research. She only needed transport to and from an off-world and still isolated pre-Contact species! She was sure that she was resourceful enough to manage her needs soon after arrival.

But, no, the energy needed to open the needed gateway and camouflage them from interfering with the study subjects was massive. The paperwork for requesting and authorizing such an expedition When the blackened blazes did it become an expedition? was even more massive. Leleth remembered the days when she thought that a degree in abnormal xenocultural studies would be interesting if not exciting, and sighed.

"What I'm telling you Lels, is there's a way to have your trip funded from more... substantial coffers."

"Seriously? What kind of trouble are you trying to land me in this time?"

"I apologized for that whole Gamma Delta Iota fiasco. This is a far better deal. All you have to do is provide the destination coordinates and agree to be the test pilot for our lastest dimensional probe. We're still getting some of the bugs out, but the neural interface is solid. So is the corporeal maintenance.

"Corporeal maintenance?"

"You can't expect to be conscious at both ends. No. We'll set you up in the teaching hospital, so you're 100% cared for under your existing school health plan. None of this gating off into hazard zones to get torn limb from limb!"

"That was Jareth's fault for trying to mind-screw the local inhabitants!"

"I'm just saying that your department has a lousy track record for fatal injuries far from home..."

Leleth knew better than to trust her childhood friend, but Ym'rph had a solid trio of good hearts. So she found herself wired up in places she didn't find comfortable or practical. "For medical telemetry!" Right. When the sedative kicked in, the sensory tunnel effect of the limited sensorium interface was almost reassuring.

JB

"What was that statistic about 'last mile' and accidents?" was not at all what JB was thinking when he heard a truck being slammed into gear off to his side. That would come later.

Leleth

She'd barely managed to get control of the tumbling probe when she saw the primitive vehicle on a collision course with one of the native fledglings. She dove.

---

"I think she's hungry."

No, no, no! I wasn't asking about food. Are there any neurons at all firing inside that primate skull?

"How do you know it's a she?"

It! A she! Leleth put more effort into her aggravated growl than into sending what she really thought about the monkey.

"She doesn't like being talked about as if she isn't there."

Damien cleaned the shaker behind the bar. He watched the masked patron sit down across from him. She was dressed in a tight body suit like some of the other villains in the bar, but Damien noticed a handkerchief clutched in her hand stained with make up. Upon closer inspection he also noticed her red puffy eyes through her domino mask. "Being a tough super villain can't protect you from heartbreak." Damien thought keeping his face stoic. He started to gather the ingredients to make her drink even before she ordered.

"White Wine." The villainess whispered. Damien obliged pouring her a quarter glass. She looked confused for a moment before she realized what Damien was doing. Then she watched willingly as his hands worked the shaker and blender making up a frozen concoction.

"Frozen Painkiller for you, Miss." Damien said in a homely voice before pouring multiple tequila shots. "If you would like some peace and quite to nurse that, I would suggest the back room." He offered sliding the shots to the rowdy men coming through the door obviously celebrating.

"Thank you." she replied standing walking to the back room enjoying the view of the Chicago skyline where she could be alone with her thoughts.

"... and the sauce sets the salmon off perfectly. Well done."

Peter Markov gave a slight bow to the illustrious chef, then turned to join the other contestants again, with a hint of a smile. Along the way, he'd given withering glances to a pair of pretentious idiots who had slagged off on him for being a 'cafeteria worker' during the trip to the restaurant.

He'd been hesitant to take Marcel's advice, but he had to admit that the time had come for him to move on and establish his career elsewhere. He had intended to take up Miss Goodkind's offer to bankroll him in a bistro, back home in Portland, but when she told him that she could arrange for him to audition for this competition, he jumped at the chance.

The fact that she'd mentioned that the network was mooting a 'special season' next year just for the superhumanly talented didn't really factor into the speed of his decision, especially when it was revealed that a separate show was to be spun off instead. Yes, he had seen a number of talented culinary gadgeteers and devisors in his seven years at Whateley, and heard of others elsewhere, but he was confident in his own skills even in the face of such abilities. Compared to that possibility, he felt that most of the others now on the show gave him little to worry about.

I sat on top of Mount Washington Observatory and watched as the sky burned and blistered. A huge rock hurtled towards the eastern seaboard bending the suns rays. Twisting them into shades of orange, red, and even violet when smaller meteorites broke away. Each one landing with the force of a small nuke. They spit up dirt, dust, and pulverized matter. A sign of what was soon to come.

The air would be super heated soon. I had hoped I would see the moment of impact. I chuckled at the thought. Maybe, I might be the only person around actively looking at the planet killer on the ground. Most of everyone had tried to get off world, or try to hunker down past the 10 km limit. But not me. I wanted to see the Earth torn asunder. I wanted the catharsis.

It had been beaten into my head since I kid. That this was going to happen, and we all had to do our part to save the human race. That race to save humanity robbed me of my mom and dad. Workplace safety measures and child labor laws go out the window when a rouge asteroid is plummeting toward your home.

It was almost that time, I popped open the tab on my cola and put on my triple glassed welding goggles. With a bright flash, I witnessed two celestial bodies slam into each other. It was blinding even with the goggles on, but I forced myself to keep looking. I saw the white heat begin to peel the crust upwards. That was the last thing I saw as the supersonic firestorm swept over the Earth snuffing out all life.


"Ma'am, the Mount Washington Observatory area has been quarantined. And the MCO is requesting access to examine the crystal." The DPA agent sounded off his report to the other agent in charge.

"Make sure, that the crystal isn't mutant in origin. Then tell the MCO in a very polite manner to go shove it." The lead agent responded. "Have we heard back from ARC? Do they have space to examine it?"

"They do, but Ma'am. There is something inside the crystal."

Having been asked for alone time by their hosts, Grizzly and Kodiak sat under a tree, cuddling together. Paws clasped, they nuzzled. But the appearance of a visitor surprised them.

"You!", roared Kodiak in surprise. "We haven't seen hide nor hare of you in forever. I had thought that you had been lost in the Sundering."

"Funny... also I nearly was", the visitor said."I saw the war coming, the tides of which would turn the Earth red with blood. I knew my power and my weakness. I knew that those like yourselves would pick up the fight. And I was not worried."

Grizzly stood up. "Still, to have one such as yourself in the medical corps would have aided us greatly."

"I did what I had to do to survive, as did both of you. But I fear that there is a shadow forming again, and to whom do we look... now that the age of elves has passed?", the visitor said solemnly.

"Paraphrasing Tolkein?", Kodiak asked, with a raised brow. "It is to men we shall look".

The mysterious guest laughed. "You know, a LOT of what Tolkein wrote mirrors events and occurrences from the great war against the Bastard, or so I have heard..."

Grizzly turned and looked at her mate, who was looking away. " I have often thought the same thing."

The guest smiled and winked at Kodiak. "I also find it interesting that in the prelude to the Main story, there appeared men who could heal, and hunt skillfully, and who could take on the guise of bears."

Kodiak paused and sighed. "That... surely is a coincidence."

The guest looked him in the eye. "Surely, for if anyone were to have told Professor Tolkein the history of the Sundering, they wouldn't have been so clumsy as to leave a self-insert in the story."

Grizzly laughed and beckoned their friend to join them.

"I would very much like to stay, but I fear I am needed elsewhere, and rather urgently. But if the fates hold true, I suspect I may see you again soon, old friends.", the visitor turned and hopped away, vanishing seemingly into the aether.

The diminutive DJ counted down to “on air”. He'd been hit with both barrels, having both dwarfism and a mutation that gave him very large triangular ears. On the other hand, in the eyes of most other students I had it far worse than him with my own five-eyed, predatory, vaguely reptilian alien appearance.

“Welcome back, you're tuned in to the Saturday morning show on Whateley Academy Radio Station doubleyew ay arr ess WARS! I am Auricle and in a blatant and, frankly, absolutely shameless bid to exploit campus gossip to gain listeners, today I have in the studio the object of much debate and many a (ahem) friendly wager, Nonsense! (Disclaimer, WARS as an official campus entity does not condone student gambling.) So let's get right to the question on the minds—and to a lesser degree wallets—of our listeners, are you a guy, or are you a gal?”

“Well, unfortunately for the booki- I mean brokers of friendly wagers, that question gets pretty philosophical. For example, let's say you come from a place where everybody has three arms sticking straight out from the middle of their chests. Simple enough. Now you go to, I don't know, another planet, and you meet a race of people that only have one arm each. Some of them have an arm on the left, and some of them have an arm on the right, and their entire culture has complicated rules on what you're supposed to do based on what side their arm is on. So naturally, they ask you whether you're right armed or left armed. How do you even begin to answer the question?”

“So you're saying you're, what, both?”

“I'm saying that the question itself doesn't really make sense in this case. I'm not about to hold a public seminar on the complex details of my own personal anatomy, but I have all the various parts necessary to fill the multiple roles in making another one of whatever it is I am. Which is more than two.”

“Are you attracted more to guys or girls, then?”

“When I look in the mirror, what I see is normal to me. So everybody else here regardless of gender is more 'weird' than 'hot' to me. Though I could probably learn to appreciate the right person.”

“Is there a reason you wear the guys' uniform?”

“Faculty wanted me to choose one or the other, and it was easier to mimic. I can't manage skirts.”

“You fake your clothes?!”

“Considering there's a specific provision for shifters to do it that way if they can, I'd be surprised if I was the only one. Though it technically says faux-shifter on my card, that's close enough. Also, you may have noticed, but my ear situation is unlike yours in that I don't have any. I hear with my skin. Covering up a large amount of it is very uncomfortable.”

“Okay... But on the other hand you use the girls' bathrooms.”

“Just like the uniform they wanted me to choose one set of facilities to use, and since it's divided between those with external crotch components and those with internal ones, for practical purposes I generally fit one and not the other. Again, not going to hold a xenobiology lecture, but a urinal is not much use to me.”

“Xenobiology? You make it sound like you really are from another planet.”

“I will neither confirm nor deny, because I don't want to make Will Smith have to track down your listeners and show them a little red light. Those black-suited fellows do like to pile on the fines when you make too much work for them.”

“And on that note, thanks for showing up and answering my intrusive questions. I'm gonna hand you guys over to my buddy Lengthwise for some Campus Ads...”

With a sigh, Le Compte adjusted his eyewear and spoke. "Mr. Vaughn, I am aware of your rather unique nature. According to Lady Astarte's records, you are not the first student here to have a deeper connection with the Great Old Ones or other demonic powers, nor the only one on campus at the moment." Seeing the child before him preapring to speak, he held up a hand. "Ah-ah, I am not at liberty to say whom the others are, so please don't ask. I will say that one of them recently had a... guest who was herself an Infernal being, whom the Mystic Arts department had to watch quite closely."
"My point is, that this does not give you leave to enter the restricted ares with a similar affinity. No matter how deep your connection runs, these are forces which represent a terrible danger to you. From what Ms. Grimes and Ms. Reilly have told me, they pose an even greater risk because of your connection to them. For this purpose, they have recommended a,", he sigh again before finishing, "specialist to act as your tutor. Mr. Turner, please send Miss Mason in."
The grinning teenaged girl who bounded in shortly after looked him straight in the eye and said, "I told you I had a reason to be on campus!"

(Sneak preview of what I'm writing very friggin' slowly.)

My cockpit shook as a squad-mate's mech launched past my right, my HUD tagging its pilot's callsign: “Gizmocrat”. She growled almost as loud as the dash jets that propelled her across the battlefield with her particle blade extended to tear through the left flank of a swarm of crawling drones trying to break into the underground facility below us.

A volley of chaingun fire from the shoulder of Ironyman's heavy tank-treaded mech swept the area Gizmocrat had come from. “G, you're supposed to be covering the west vent shaft!”

I thinned out the wave approaching the north vent with my own mech's plasma rifle as Giz protested, “I had it under control! This is a bug hunt, I'm hunting bugs!”

Pullyu came over the comms from his rear-gunner turret on the hoversled to the south. “Venting your frustrations on the battlefield?” Pushmi followed her brother up with “Is it those test results?”

Huge missile blasts from Gizmocrat's mech lit up the northeast sector. “Damn right it's the test results! Not only do I have no gadgeteer or devisor abilities, I have the absolute lamest power on the entire! Friggin! Planet!” The last few words were punctuated by shots from her grenade launcher.

I hacked away at the drones with my particle blade to conserve ammo and interjected. “You can't give us that much and leave us hanging. What's the lamest power?”

“I have a psychokinetic field that, as far as I can tell, does absolutely nothing but stop sound. It doesn't make me strong, it doesn't keep me from getting hurt, it just means I have the fantastic power to go deaf whenever I want!”

“Could be worse, at least you can turn it off,” I remarked, lobbing a few rockets into some drone clusters. “As for the other problem, you can still invent stuff the old-fashioned way. I mean, you're not dumb, you already have actual patents.”

“I still reserve the right to be pissed off at the universe for a while and take it out on these stupid things.”

“You'd better do it while you can, then,” commented Ironyman. “I think the waves are starting to thin out.”

And do it she did, proceeding to single-handedly clear out the entire west side until the “Mission Clear” message floated across our HUDs and the battlefield froze, then faded to the hangar. Our mission stats popped up, after repairs and ammo my share of the payout left me enough that I'd finally be able to upgrade my mech's legs. I asked,“Are we taking another mission, guys?”

“We're going to be logging off, we've got homework.” I wasn't sure which of the twins that was, it was hard to tell their voices apart without the HUD highlighting who was speaking.

“Well, then, I'm going to log too, see you guys.”

I pulled up the menu and quit. The message “Logging out pilot: Vermilion” passed my eyes briefly as I removed the VR headset and slid my chair forward to put it on my desk. I leaned back and closed my eyes for a few seconds. VR tech had come a long way in recent years, but coming back to the real world was always a little disorienting.

It was only a few moments before Aunt Clair leaned in my open door. “Hey River, I'm going to the G-Mart for some stuff. Need anything?”

“Not that I can think of.”

“Alright. Hold down the fort while I'm gone.”

“No problem.”

Growing frustrated with the chatter, mostly 'gender traitor' bashing, going on behind her the young Sidhe spun in her seat to glower at the ambush of Amazons behind her.

"Look you lot, you have some serious misconceptions about the origins of your groups name. Bup teacher is talking now." she added, quickly casting a sound deadening spell so the real teacher couldn't hear, and to just shut the Amazons up. "First off, the origin is Sidhe, not Greek or what ever you think it is, that group if there was one came later. No, you lot evere watch The Hobbit, specifically the scene about an Elvin guy being mistaken for a maid? Well back in the day male Sidhe where so far and few between, that like female dwarves, the other races thought they didn't exist. And the males looked so much not the hulks male humans are those that where around blended in with the ladies. But if that isn't breaking you're bitty minds enough there was a group whom the Enemy infected with something or other that would have killed all the males."

there was a mouthed 'Good Riddance' which earned a glower.

."Any way to save those males effected, the bionages did some tinkering and made them more feminine, which they passed to their children. A colony was made up of these altered males and their mates and off spring, and they defended their borders fiercely, to prevent other males from contracting the whatever it was. Eventually they moved off planet, and the rest is lost to history.

At the end of class Ms. Rielly stopped the Sidhe girl. "That wasn't very nice telling them that story"

"Why not? it was the truth."

(Inspired by this comment by Bek.)

"What do you mean, my mother isn't ranked high enough? I'll have you know that she's on super scan's top 100 list."

Sister Secret sighed as she listened to the freshman rant. She took a moment to compose herself before responding. "So you claimed when you applied for membership. However, there's a problems with that. First, it's the list of top 100 féme fatals. That's not the same as the 100 most dangerous devisors. Second, the site looks like it was put together by a high school freshman. Unless you can show me that it has a similar number of legitimate hits as HeroWatch or VillianWatch, the relevancy is suspect. And finally, we use the MCOs danger rankings. The minimum threshold is a 'B' ranking, and she barely made the 'C' list."

"Why would you rely on anything produced by those jackboots?"

"As close-minded as they can be at times, they have demonstrated a competency at prioritizing their resources."

"So how did Karma get into your little club? Her mother isn't even on the list."

The senior snorted. "She isn't on the list now. When she was at the height of her career, she was just shy of an A rank. And besides, would you really want to tick off the queen of pranks?"

"You want pranks? I'll give you pranks!" The younger student stormed off in a huff towards the labs.

Dragonblade shook his head as he watched. "And that is the problem with borderline Diedrick's cases. Not their fault they have the syndrome, but they are awfully good at getting into trouble."

"At least the outcome will probably be less than lethal."

"We hope."

“We were made. We were weapons. An apex predator. Seed a few of us on a planet and throw ecosystems into ruin after only a few generations, program us to attack specific individuals, or bloodlines, or even make entire species extinct. But they made us a little too adaptable. We got smart, decided we didn't particularly care for the role we'd been cast in and started making plans to escape to a nice quiet part of the galaxy. At about the same time, our creators' neighbors had all finally gotten tired of them and tired of us. Our existence was made illegal, and the homeworlds of our makers were all simultaneously reduced to asteroid fields. We... thought the world we'd evacuated to would hide us from pursuit. The next planet over shone brightly with inherent power, enough to hide the gates we'd learned from our masters to travel with. The inhabitants of the third planet didn't care about the second, because it didn't have nearly as much of that magical power they called essence, but we didn't care. We'd been created incapable of accumulating that kind of power, our masters were afraid of us learning to do something they couldn't and turning against them. But even though we shut down every gate after that, it didn't last forever. Eventually, we were tracked down. The bastard elves next door had no problem with our destruction, they merely insisted that the planet we were on be incinerated and sterilized instead of reduced to rubble, to avoid littering their system with debris and affecting their orbit. But they ended up getting theirs. They were almost completely wiped out in a temporospatial cataclysm of their own. Turns out this corner of the galaxy is only mostly quiet.”

Somewhere Beyond the Looking Glass...
"Mam, can ye tell us a story!" said the little child at the foot of her mother's rocking chair. The little girl had bright green eyes and long firey read hair. Her clothes were simple and yet grand; a dress woven of the finest silk and greener than the forest itself. Along the edge of her long sleeves was silver thread stitched into curling knotwork.

"Yes lil' I can," said the Queen of that far-away place. Like her daughter her hair was the color of fire and kissed with lengths of white. Eyes the color of sapphires and held a brilliance no mortal could match!

"Where did magic come from?" asked the child.

"Long, long ago - before mortals came to the world was only the Folk who lived there. After the great Nightmare we built a golden city with brass spires and a high alabaster wall. From within our people practiced lost sciences and our lore was at our highest!"

The girl smiled as the story continued. "But one day an old man came to the gate and he was let in. The wisest of our Elders saw no reason to, but some spoke to the man after a while of his coming."

"What did they ask him mam!?" the girl blurted out.

"A Prince of Time and Thunder asked for a name - a name worthy of his greatness as the son of Earth and Sky." She smiled as she leaned forward to stroke her daughter's hair. "And the man gave him the name and a magical sickle to take his father's throne. As the Sky King was cast aside the old man smiled and more came for names of their own."

"Finally, all that remained was the oldest of our kin and the most wise of your foremothers." The little girl cheered as the story continued.

"She went before the foreigner and said, 'Outlander. Ye come bearing the Wisdom of the Stars an' yet ye are tainting us all!' And she then demanded he give her a name. Instead of a name, the man drew a long bloodsteel sword and used it to attack the Wisest. She was able to parry him, but in the ensuing duel she was harm."

The little princess frowned as the story turned dark and she sat up to exclaim, "Mam what does this story mean!"

"Well, my heart, when the old man harmed your foremother she used the last of her lore to cast him and all those who listened to him from the city. The great King of Time was sent to his mountain home with his traitorous progeny. As were many others and to this day we Folk especially the House of Don remember one thing dearest."

The little girl asked, "What is that mam?"

"Never trust the Starry Wisdom my heart, never listen to the Deadened Stars for all they will tell you are lies."

Somewhere in the mountains of West Virginia.

“I’ve done everything I can.” AP sounded off removing his protective latex gloves from his hands.

“The LifeFlight should be here soon we just have to stay put and they will spot the fire.” Blood Knight responded. Both of the boys looking at the girl with her back turned to the tent, where the sounds of someone fighting for their life emanated.

“I should talk to her…” Blood Knight started to say before AP put his arm out stopping him. AP simply shook his head and walked towards the girl who was simply petting her large wolf.

The squelching of mud followed AP’s footsteps like a man on his way to the gallows. The walk across camp felt much longer than it actually was. The burden of what needed to be said pushing him down into the muck.

“I’ve done all I can…” AP spoke, pulling out a pack of his hidden cigarettes.

“You should’ve done nothing. He is not our responsibility!” Kylie spat with venom. “He sold his soul to Fenrir…” Her tirade was stopped by a swift slap across her cheek. It echoed around the camp, and Fenris growled in response. “He tried to kill Fenris…” Her voice stopped by the returning backhand of the first slap.

“If there is something you need to tell him. You don’t have long to say it.” AP’s normally cold hard exterior melted, allowing Kylie to see what he really meant. With tears welling up she shuffled to the tent where the man struggled to breathe. Leaving AP alone with a growling spirit.

“Touch a member of my pack again War-Healer, and I will cleave your arm.” Fenris growled.

“Tell me spirit.” AP sat on a log, lighting his cigarette and wiping the grime from his face. “Which is worse. The pain of a slap? Or the weight of guilt?” The wolf didn’t respond, and AP simply nodded.

Kylie stood at the entrance to the tent, the smell of blood filled her nostrils. Inside the tent was a man covered in makeshift bandages and stitches, but his breathing was labored. The damage from their battle had hurt him more than it had hurt them.

“Dad…” Kylie spoke standing scared away from the man. Half expecting him to turn into a Champion of Fenrir again.

“Kyle…or Kylie, I should say….” Her father whispered. “I’m so sorry…. For everything. I wish I just reached out…. Maybe this wouldn't…..” His words cut off by the pain of his body breaking down.

“Dad…” Kylie sniffed, clenching her fists unsure of what to do. She was lost in a sea of her emotions.

“You look...so much like your mother…. Make her proud…” He coughed before his death rattle took him.

“Dad, please...I forgive you...just please! The helicopter is close, just hang on!” Kylie screamed taking hold of his hand. When she realised the hand no longer contained a pulse, her sobs became wails.

Midnight, Saturday, November 2, 2013,

Bukit Asing "Ash-Bucket" Cemetery, Kapalangpur

Few cemeteries are welcoming places at night, less so the older the plots or more disreputable the deceased within their gates. Some of the worst are only marked by the dread the locals hold for them. Others are distinguished by the sturdy iron fences set in stone or mortar to keep the hungry residents in their place. This night, in this place, two visitors in a murdered-out jeep bring a kind of offering to be dumped out and forgotten. Kapalangpur has no use for failure except as a warning to others. After the jeep drives off, the only sounds are the rain on the grounds and maybe, if one listened closely, the muffled sobs of an abandoned child.

After some time, two more figures approach the body. One prods it with their walking stick, pushing it onto its back. The other gasps in horror at the mangled wreck of the dying young man's face.

"Uume. How long have you wished for a child to hold?"

"Since before the ang mo came."

"There is a draught that can be found in a place that I will tell to you. There will be three days of tending to the changing fever, but it may yet offer life to this one."

"Then the child will go its way and I will remain here alone?"

"Not if the two who brought the living here for burial take yours and his place. My husband digs one grave tonight. I leave its occupancy to you."

"These things shall be done."

There was this guy I met. Some out of the way place you'd never have heard of. Thing is, I was hired to run a pen test.

A penetration test? How far did you get?

Not as far as I'd have liked. You know how those things go: in and out without time to make attachments.

Past the usual gatekeepers though?

I like to think so. But there were a few complications, maybe an attachment, hard to say.

Really? Usually those things are easy to say... if you don't mean them.

Like I said: complicated. What if I was mistaken, or if it were a one-way connection? Neither option's healthy in this business.

This business?

Getting in, doing what I do, and getting back out before I overstay my welcome.

Ah. Did you?

Did I what?

Overstay your welcome.

I don't know. Perhaps I pulled out too soon?

Perhaps. But if you have to ask, I don't think you did.

You're saying you have more experience than me?

When it comes to being unwelcome, the record's clear.

That depends on who's keeping the records. Months later I find out that I'd maybe missed my chance at reviewing them. Imagine how that might feel.

Discouraging all around. However if the attachment remained?

Yes. What then?

Maybe a different point of entry is in order. There's always more than one.

You say that now, but quality can't be rushed.

There's such a thing as waiting too long.

Again, that depends. How ephemeral was the encounter?

As much, or as little, as it needs to be to reach completion.

I have a good feel for when completion has been reached.

Then I eagerly await the results.


I'd flunk all three idiots using the low-end Gizmatics. They forgot to change the carrier frequency to avoid interference. Cyber Swarm's bug is at least using decent encryption and burst transmission, but yeah, the placement sucked ass. Oh, and let's remember to wave at Michelle Brown, off to your left, and her binoculars.

“Jade, why are you so quiet?” Billie asked from where she was doing her homework on the ceiling, looking down at where her pint sized roommate was tapping away at her laptop keyboard. “I hate to say it, but you not giggling like a loon is making me nervous.”

“I found something on line, and I was inspired.” Jade replied without looking up as she absently reached over to charge up the pencil, paper, and text book that there doing her homework.

Billie gave Jade an inquisitive look before dropping to the floor and leaning over to read the screen. “Jade, what the hell is this?” the spiky blue haired girl asked.

“It's us. Well all of Whateley really. Just as My Little Ponies.” Jade replied as she beckoned to her lion who scampered to the door, opened it, and scampered out. It was back a few second later trailed by Bunny, who carried a plastic crate.

“Do you have someone watching the tunnels so you knew when I was coining up?” Bunny asked looking down at the lion who was playing with he shoelace like a kitty.

“She timed out just as you got to the door. So are they done?”

“The first batch is. Careful, they're still warm from the printer.” Bunny replied as she began setting items on the desk.

Billie carefully picked one up and turned it over in her hands. It was a jade green unicorn, that at a glance, was smaller then the others Bunny was setting out. It had a black mane and tail, with brown eyes. On it's flanks was a picture of Kitty Compact and a few of the other J-team peices. Around it's foreleg wad a band that when Billie's body heat warmed it, or something, the color changed frome a pacifist band to the red of Ultra Violent.

“Here's yours.” Jade said helpfully as she 'set' a peach colored pegasus with spiky blue hair, golden cat eyes, and ears that stuck out to the sides in the air in front of Billie.

“What is on it's butt?”

“Um, well we couldn't think of anything cute so we went with a mushroom cloud.” Bunny replied “Here's Hanks!” she said changing the topic, as she presented a gray eyed, pale blue pony that somehow came across as mescalin, even though the body shape was more or less the same as the 'female' ponies. His cutie mark was a knight chess piece on a splotch of camo.

“Nikki's.” A silver alicorn which had red hair, green eyes, and the pony equivalent of elf ears, was put in front of Billie. Her cutie mark was Nikki's sword in front of a burning oak leaf.

Jade pulled out the next one. “No Fun Guy.” The cutie mark for Alya's pony was a red circle with a line through it over a party horn and balloons. Unlike the others in the collection this pony was a diagonal gradient going from dark gray on the tips of its muzzle and ears to a light almost white at the back hooves. It had with a black mane and tail, which were cut short and punky.

“Toni.” Chaka's pony's was chocolate brown with a black mane and golden eyes, which was standing on its hind limbs. Billie saw that its limbs were articulated, and the figure had accessories in the form of a Manriki-gusari and a plastic energy blast that looked to be spring loaded. The cutie mark was a lounging leopard.

“Mine.” Bunny said placing a yellow pony with clipped on pink bunny ears into Jade's reach so she could add it to the herd floating in the air. The cutie mark was a pink and white rabbit with one ear flopped over.

“Jinn” It consisted of an ethereal looking green tinged white bat winged pegasus wearing a tattered cloak cloak. On the flank was the image of a tomb stone. “And Shroud's” It swirled, melting and reforming into a collection of parts that rose up into a pony shape. A chalk white horse skull and a few other 'bones' poked out of the cloak, the wings reduced to skeletal fingers.

“I'm thinking of using a larger version of this in the Sims and Akido at some point.” the Jinn-Pony said looking up at her friends.

“Gunny and Ito-Sensei are going to be so thrilled.” Bilie deadpanned.

“I know, right?” the 'ghost' girl said cheerfully, prompting a groan.

“This is only the first run, we're still designing the rest of Wondercute's ponies and a few others, friends and staff..” Bunny explained. I want to make Imp and Lady Astarte ones”

“Why do I feel this is going to end up shoulder angel bad?” Billie asked facepalming.

“Because when I left the printer lab Jericho was designing Outcast ponies?”

Lt. Trout, already fuming at have to pull a punishment detail at the campus bookstore, was in no mood for what he was certain to come once he saw Traduce walk in, ranting about careless assistants who keep dropping wi... grape juice (he noted this for later consideration) in her lap.

He'd already seen Corrosive storm past the door towards the school uniforms complaining about the disrespectful brute who tore her expensive tailored blouse (he'd already heard the radio call about her accosting Froggy, whom she's apparently tried to pass in the hallways and got too close, snagging her clothes on one of his elbow spurs). So as Miss Armstrong walked towards the same department, he was torn between grabbing his pepper spray or nuking a bag of popcorn.

Right on cue, he could hear the shouting:

"I cannot believe how rude you are being! I want to speak to your manager!" shouted Karen, in the shrill voice one comes to expect from her. A quick glance told him that Peeper, the only one actually working there at the moment, had ducked behind the cash wrap, not wanting to get hit with the verbal shrapnel.

Brenda shot back with, "How DARE you insinuate that I would DEMEAN myself such as to work here!"

"OF COURSE you do! I have heard ALL ABOUT the troubles your father has had with the Initech contract, I wouldn't be surprised if you will be moved over to HAWTHORNE once they..."

Trout knew when to call for backup.

Whateley Academy, circa 2018; After-movie discussion.

"So, what kind of superpowers does John Wick have?"
"He's supposed to be a baseline."
"Oh, c'mon! NO WAY Wick is a baseline! In the second movie alone, he was ran over by cars, what, four times? And stabbed how many times? And let's not forget, this all happened a day or two after the first movie, at the end of which he was barely alive."
"Yeah, it's like the way Batman is supposed to be a baseline, but in fact to do everything he does for so long, he would have to be an EX-3 at the least. Probably higher."
"Wick is not a high Exemplar. He didn't show either strength nor intelligence above normal. He's at most an EX-3."
"But EX-3 would give him only the equivalent of Regen-1. Not nearly enough to recover from all the crap he goes through."
"So he has some standalone Regen? Maybe a Regen-2?"
"Yeah, nothing higher than that. He does get a lot of bruises."
"Hmmm, Regen-2 would also help explain his above-average stamina. I mean, he keeps fighting and winning and does not seem to get as tired as he should... the Regen would keep removing toxins from his blood and muscles so he would last longer. Yeah, that makes sense."
"OK, so Wick has to be a Regen-2, and *might* be also a low Exemplar. Anything else?"
"Oh, a bit of Psi of some sort. I mean, he got that dog to obey him after owning him for... one day? So he has to have enough TP or Empathy to be able to make himself understood to the dog."
"Check, low-level psi. What else?"
"Well, I was going to go with GSD, but considering that last one, it might be a Psi talent instead."
"What are you talking about?"
"The car crashes. He never breaks a single bone, even after being ran over all those times. He might have rubbery bones or something like it, which would be GSD. Or..."
"Let me guess, you think he has some sort of PK protective force shield?"
"No, I was going with mecha-empathy."
"What?"
"The cars like him, and take care not to hurt him too much."
(the last speaker is buried under a barrage of objects)

“Something like that, but the school doesn't want to neglect the obligation as his estate still keeps tabs.” Erica replied as she leaned against a display that housed a photo, sword, and a glass pendant. “He disappeared at the same time Elizabeth Carson and several others did.” Erica let out a sigh as she looked at the picture across from Paramount's. “This was painted by one of the school's alumni, and was donated just last month.”

Carson's portrait depicted an attractive blond woman in three quarter's profile standing on a porch looking out at what I assumed was as part of the campus. Pockets of students were scattered in the background. Not all the little figures where 'normal'. A girl with a serpent tail instead of legs was walking with another girl who was a centaur. Another, a figure had horns and a tail. And then there was the velociraptor who was chasing another student while a small group stood laughing. There was a look of satisfaction mixed with worry in Carson's expression, a Mamma bear proud of her kids, but wondering if she had done enough to prepare them.

10 PM, Thursday night,
Twain Cottage, Whateley Academy

Benjamin 'Belfry' Keeling was making the most of this evening's temporary quiet for dedicated study time. For all that English was his native language, spelling and vocabulary weren't his strongest points. Toss him syntax and grammar - the nuts and bolts of how the bloody beast works - and he was sorted. Fiddling details? Not so much.

That quiet was aided by the sound-damping panels installed to forestall Maximillion Argyle Livingston the Fourth's ('Super-Dance-Party') imminent demise at the hands of the other residents on that floor. Max liked life turned up to eleven and a half. Benjamin knew what it had to do with Max's devisor-induced manifestation and how. He'd rather open a vein than tell anyone about that. What surprised everyone else the most was that that eleven and a half applied to studying. When Max went to the Library, he was there until it closed.

A gentle door slam announced the end of quiet time.

"Hey, roomie, how's it going?"

"Handbasket, meet Hell, one-way tickets only?"

"Could be. Could be. Guess what I read on one of my fan club sites?" asked Max.

"I'm almost afraid to ask. Some of your fans are pretty devoted."

That was an understatement.

Max's words carried the razor-sharp smile his roommate didn't see. "It seems that someone who will remain anonymous by the initials BXK told someone else that I rescued them from a beatdown."

"That sounds about right, doesn't it?"

"It would. But somehow, they omitted the part where I was the one shaking them down for money. That is, until my dirtbag associates got spooked and ran."

Benjamin turned and looked up. "Does it matter?"

"Yes!"

"You've been open about starting out from the gutters, so that isn't changed."

"Yes, but--;"

"But who, precisely, got me home when there was no way I could have managed on my own?"

"Me, but that's not the point. I could have left you there. I thought about it."

Benjamin smirked at that. "See? I knew you had some sense in you."

He dropped the humor like a spent shell before going on. "It's what you did that matters to me. If I hadn't met Mom, Reg, you, Yuki? I would be haunting that cemetery today." Now he stared down at an English text he wasn't seeing. "Soren would still be living with, maybe... No. By now, he'd have done it."

Max didn't ask or offer a choice. He bent down and held his friend in a bear hug across the chest until the shaking stopped.

"You never asked me what I get out of knowing you."

"A great corporate discount on ammo?"

How are those deflector shields working for you, roomie?

"I had contacts before meeting you, you know! That said, you were the first person in a long, long time to see me as a person, not a freak show, a mark, or a GSD case. Even here, dude. Serious."

Max straightened up. "Now! While I have your... your broken earbuds? How'd you swap them like that? Anyway, it's still a good time for some new K-pop!"


Their RA spotted them five urgent complaint calls before letting himself into the room (No one, but no one, could hear knocking through the noise) and shutting down Max's stereo system. Benjamin was already curled up with his head under a pillow and out for the night. One of these days, he'd figure out how the two GSD Brits could stand each other. For a few hours of peace, he could let it ride.

“Hey Jericho, I had an idea I wanted to run by you.”

“What's up Vibes?” Joe “Jericho” Turner asked as he pulled his head out of a mechanical compartment of his Rafe 2 armor, at the sound specialist.

Arwin “Goodvibes” Hochauser tapped the frame holding up the armor. “You've heard of Bert..”

“Your partner for the morning show? Yeah, I've caught your act a few times when working until dawn.”

“Well, Bert got me thinking. You've been so focused on making this thing a walking ambulance, have you thought about a version fitted with firefighting gear?”

“I just got this image of Cait with a big ass fire ax and an evil grin...” Joe said with a shudder.

“Naked or dressed?” Goodvibes quipped, a little thankful that the Amazonian Outcast was nowhere near.

“Don't make me have to hurt you, Arwin.” The blind inventor rocked back on his heels as he rubbed his chin, leaving a smear of grease. “An industrial versions of Doc's co2 bombs. Mount those in the gauntlets... Can't, at the moment, think of how to add ladders... Have to think about what other gear would work. Thanks for the idea.”

"... the idea is that the Essence stored within will grow like a seed, that with the sun's love, in the Spring becomes the Rose! An alchemical rose in its main respects, but that's what I told him." Brittney Ellison had no idea how any of that had any bearing on the multiple alerts from the campus precogs, but that's what she had been asked about.

"Miss Ellison!" Miss Grimes belatedly remembered that the former Magical Girl Hero was, in sad fact, a colleague. "Please, do try to focus. Exactly who were you coaching on the topic of power cultivation diagrams earlier today?"

"I distinctly recall that he was a quiet young man, entirely too serious. I did check, and though his Well isn't lit, he draws too much Essence to not have the mutant wizard trait."

"Have you checked your daily planner, in case you left yourself some notes?"

"I did!" Miss Ellison seemed even more perplexed by something, "The oddest thing happened. Instead of my appointments, the software displayed a morning workout program in Russian. The fitness instructor had to be older than Jane Fonda!"

Elyzia Grimes hurried back to her office, both to warn Mrs. Bardue of the potential for magical disaster in her Cottage and Mr. Erwin that Miss Ellison was to be added to his list of Instructors to Avoid.

Tuesday morning, August 28, 2007,
McCarran International Airport, Las Vegas, Nevada

Judging by the ruler-straight part combed and pomaded into his straw-colored hair, crisp white shirt, plain black backpack, and parade-polished shoes, one might have assumed that Mason "Mase" Goodwin was brought up in the most stable environment possible for their corner of Utah. His biological parents, legally-adoptive parents, and most of their co-parents would, with no shortage of reluctance, agree.

"At least he didn't wear the nametag," his Aunt Aramathea was heard to say, as the departing flight taxied away from the gate. "Though it might discourage his roommate from burning some weird-ass incense mix in the dorm room."

"Mase is frightfully allergic to patchouli," her sister-wife Katryn sniffed.

"Kat, stop beating yourself up over that! The boy was too young to know to knock first. Truth to tell, I never did like the taste." Aramathea looked her wife in the eye, "That's not the real problem, is it?"

"What if he forgets who he is, living among... you remember what Brother Hector said about the place?" Katryn asked.

"Are you even listening to yourself? Mase will be just fine. I'd be more worried for the sleazebag who waltzed up to the airline counter after listening in on the kids comparing notes."

"Truly worried?"

"Not at all. Mase has been practicing. A taste of the real world will serve him well."


Tuesday afternoon,
baggage claim, Logan International Airport, Boston, Massachusetts

Bunny "Bugs" Cormick watched the thirty-something they'd been packed in with for the last six hours scuttle off like a man on a mission. She waited until he was too far to hear her before saying,

"Mase, I think I should warn you that the school has classes dedicated to punking what you did there."

"Now, hold on! If you didn't approve, why didn't you say something?" If anything, Mase had been certain that she'd enjoyed the show.

"I was born and raised a Vegas girl. I don't need to have the perp looking down my cleavage to know a pedo when I see one and I was raised better than to heckle a good act."

"In the mood for a second act?"

"Down, boy. My evening's already booked, if a certain someone knows what's good for them."

Whateley Academy, May 1990
Jeanette van Nuys scowled, as once again one of those damn Exemplar bitches walked off with the hunky guy she'd had her eyes on all year. Jumping Gene - God, she needed to change that codename, it just figured that the dumb 'hero' who interviewed her would latch on to the one thing she kept babbling about - wasn't exactly ugly, but she was, well, plain.

Worse, most of the boys found her boring.

She couldn't help it if she was smarter than them! Just because they didn't find biology interesting - at least, not the sort of biology Jean specialized in - didn't mean it wasn't, did it? She could do things none of those overstacked bimbos could!

With a shrug, she walked into the computer room, where she'd been headed in the first place. She didn't really care much about computers, but not that long ago one of the comp sci nerds (he was interesting, but not exactly handsome, not like some of the exemplar guys are) told her about something called 'The Internet', which connected the school's mainframe to computers all around the country. She'd started up on a USENET group call alt.genetics.hyper looking to see what she could find, and there she ran across someone calling herself 'Doctor Veritas'. She said that if Jean would come out to her lab in Wyoming - why so far out of the way, she wondered? - after she graduated, with all the DNA samples she'd managed to surreptitiously collect, she'd have a job as Dr Veritas' apprentice.

Jean wasn't naive; she knew that Veritas was a Black Hat. She didn't care. it was time to get hers back, she figured. Maybe even find a way to outshine those damn Exemplars.

Mason Goodwin

Something about Dalton Meier had caught Mason's eye back when his troop had stopped by to introduce themselves to Troop 668. Maybe the guy must have already been ill from manifesting or something. As things sat now, he'd hardly had time to drag the two of them out of the river ford before Dalton's clothing baked itself dry. Back at camp, Brother Jonathan didn't look too happy to see them. Mister Mutie here just had to go and dare him:

"Into the Light I command thee!"

Mason knew well enough to have added the Solstice and dodgy circumstances to sacred grounds and herbs, converted to base supernatural, and carried the stupid. To be honest, even if he weren't tripping, that might not have stopped the impulse to stir some chaos into the situation. If anyone was going to be calling a bluff, it was him.

"Woah."

Someone was dressed for the party! Dark hair trimmed short, black long-sleeved tee pinned with a pair of masks, black denim trousers, black boots, even a roll of tape in a holder clipped to his belt. Aunt Aramathea had mentioned some interesting things that could be done with that, in sex ed. class.

"Good to see you, Jon, boys. Why don't we get the Apostle jokes out of the way, so we can get this show on the road, huh?"

"Y'mean there really was an Apostle Rufus?" asked Mase. If false advertising were a sin...

"You can bet your ass it's a sin, but nope, there wasn't. It's just that Chris Rock looks a lot like me. Handsome guy, if I say so myself. By the way? Don't ever do that crap you just pulled again unless you know for a fact you can deal with whoever or whatever shows up. This place has too many snake spirits wandering around for anybody's comfort."

Jonathan spoke up, "You wouldn't happen to have any helpful advice for us from the upstairs yobbos, would you?"

"It wasn't us who warned you. That's all I can say. Oh, and maybe let Hellboy Junior here brew up that tea he was talking about earlier. You might need all the healing you can get. Look at the time! Gotta jet."


Brother Jonathan

Jonathan gave in and lit a cigarette. It gave his hands something to do while his mind ran in circles. It wasn't so much a matter of not having a plan. It was more a matter of how bad the plan he did have was going to turn out. Mason and Dalton could manage an herbal infusion without his help. It's not like they were in a good position, either of them, to complain about his little habit.

"We're being watched, y'know."

Without his hat, Mason's hair glowed silver in the rising moonlight. Otherwise, the boy was another shadow in his dark element.

"I'd've figured that would be obvious, Goodwin."

"Some are curious, something's worried, some are... excited? I'd ask for help loading up the vehicles and coming back in the morning but if that were in the cards, we'd already be finished, wouldn't we? What's the plan?"

"You could try driving your own crew out. Maybe play your wicker man game next year, without witnesses."

"We're supposed to be making an offering of first fruits from the harvest. It's separate from our duty to Our Lord. Aren't your people supposed to be big on giving thanks?"

Jonathan ignored the insult, "Stow the theology kid." First fruit? that could be taken a few ways if you wanted to hijack a harvest ritual... "Here's a better question: are any of your friends the first-born sons of their fathers?"

"Not a chance in hell for Mr. Smith, nor Jimmie Hardin. Both are former Lost Boys. Hm..."

Jonathan waited for Mason's attention to return. Getting upset or anxious with the boy, on what was probably his first trip, wouldn't help. Sometimes – but only sometimes – growing up in the 70s had its perks.

"...I'd have to ask our mothers to find out if anyone knows that about me or the others." Mason kicked at the dirt with the toe of his boot, "My literal parents left the community some years ago, but there might be records."

"That sounds—"

"Like a bunch of goddamned commie hippy freaks and heathens?"

More like someone who wouldn't be missed.

Mason scoffed, "Me an' the others have been called worse. Trust me when I say there's good reasons there's a big desert butte between us and FLDS central. Anyway, what difference does it make who was born to whom?"

"To ceremonial magic? Life and death, son. Life and death."

That makes you the dead man walking if I screw this up.