Omnibus 2019.11

Birthday Bedlam

Unusually bright, an early October full moon hung in the Las Vegas sky cutting light through the darkness of Meadows Towing sprawling junkyard. Benjamin Baxter edged to an intersection and placed a careful hand on the jagged kinks of flattened cars stacked twenty high and hoped his car hadn’t already met the same fate.

He peered around the corner.

A light desert breeze worked down the long row of vehicles squashed and stacked like large Legos. The dry air pressed against Ben’s face, bringing the heavy smell of rust and neglected plastic. Bathed only in moonlight, the true colors of the cars turned into muted tones. Shadows did most of the coloring here.

Doing his best not to break the silence that lay over the scrapyard like a warm blanket. Ben hurried down the row.

Movement at the far edge of the row caught his eye. He sucked in a quick gulp of air and froze.

This boar, like the one before, had long tusks, stood waist-high and looked thoroughly pissed off as it crossed between rows of compacted cars thirty feet ahead. Ben eyed the spiked leather collar as it snorted and stalked.

He pulled out his new Anvilsmith tablet—a birthday gift from the Archon Primary Academy—and a spell card he’d crafted and programmed for a situation like this, and lined the SD card up with the slot on his device.

Ben kept the surprised gulp locked in his lungs. Like before, he hoped the boar would continue on.

According to the scry he had bought from Crystal, this was supposed to be a moonlit stroll through a vacant scrapyard to recover his stolen car. This guard animal, the second he had come across, signaled otherwise. Why’d they take his car in the first place? Better yet, what kind of lunatic would use ravished boars as guard animals.

He frowned. Worst sixteenth birthday ever.

If the operators of this lot were crafty enough to conceal the beasts from Crystal’s divination, they were, at the least, starwise and, at the worst, well-practiced in the arts.

Ben let his breath ease out as the animal began to go around the corner.

His device gave a small tick. Ben’s robotic companion—Tex—also searched Meadows Towing for his car and had just unsilenced his Anvilsmith. Unable to slide his finger to lower the volume and keep the spellcard ready, Ben pressed the tablet into his gut and prayed to muffled the speakers enough.

Loud and proud, Tex’s synthesized voice blared, “Found it!”

The boar turned with a sharp snort and bristled.

Ben slid the spellcard the rest of the way in and pressed “activate.”

The SD card shot from the Anvilsmith like a miniature black comet with a snapping green energy tail. It pulsed strongly with the same energy when it struck the ground.

His school tie and trench coat started to react to the pull from the sudden vacuum before the crackling energy shattered the card. It released a gust of wind, whipping Ben’s coat and hair back when Orion, a large gorilla made of sparkling green energy, appeared from the destroyed spellcard. The magical glow faded as his conjured protector materialized.

Focused on Ben, its original target, the boar lowered its menacing tusks and charged. It tried to plow through the gorilla.

Orion dropped its center of gravity. Strong arms caught the boar and redirected on a tangent to slam into wall of smashed wrecks.

Ben was saved.

Orion fought on.

Ben felt the familiar tingling sensation at the center of his brain when the conjurer’s link formed.

A rush of adrenaline surged through him as he piggybacked on Orion’s awareness and the gorilla’s senses became his own.

Together, they rolled with the force from the boar’s charge. They had one of the beast’s tusks in hand and beat at it with the other.

The boar got its feet beneath it and jerked its neck back to break free.

With a focused thought, Ben made Orion grab the other tusk. Before he could issue a follow-up command, the gorilla acted on instinct. A mighty yank ripped one tusk away from the creature’s snout with a sickening crack.

Ben recoiled from the link and regained his own senses.

The boar’s squeals of pain were cut short as Orion stabbed it repeatedly with its own tusk.

A chill ran up Ben’s spine. His throat constricted.

Ben had summoned conjurations in the past to perform tasks around the Archon Private Academy. He had used this same gorilla to move Master Reynolds’s heavy black cauldrons. There were joys in controlling creatures to do chores, but having conjured one who had killed filled him with disgust.

Orion thumped its chest in victory and sidled next to Ben, offering the bloody tusk to show it had completed the task set to it. Further, it tried to give Ben the mental reins to embody it again.

Ben shook his head at both the tusk and control. Appreciative of the gesture, he pet-patted the gorilla’s massive hairy arm, but looked away in disgust. Between the rows of the compressed cars, his gaze went to the boar. He didn’t want to see the dead creature, but his attention floated to the area.

Orion stood in the way, and Ben was glad his conjuration blocked the view.

“I said, found it.” Tex reminded him, its light metallic voice carrying through the Anvilsmith. “It is...” A ping sounded as Tex plotted coordinates. “Right here.” That and a couple of deep breaths of the steel-laden air helped remind Ben of why he had come.

Ben turned his back to the boar and thumbed the volume down to 25%. He rubbed his face with vigor and tried to rid his memory of the crack and last life-ending whine.

“Need I remind you of how Master Reynolds will respond to your loss of a birthday gift on the night of its gifting?” Tex imitated Master Reynolds’s Southampton accent. “Lose one of your sixteenth’s gifts, Benjamin, and you lose them all.”

Ben clenched his fist against failure. It would be the same as when he had lost one of the three gifts he received for his thirteenth birthday.

Most annoyingly, his third gift—Tex, a small Golemcast robot—was right. If he lost his car—a sleek, APA red convertible Transcend—Master Reynolds would demand he forfeit Tex and the Anvilsmith tablet.

No one ever had to surrender a second set of gifts. He’d be the grand fool of the APA.

Ben’s brow pulled into a decisive knot. If he couldn’t recover his car, he wouldn’t return to school.

The dead boar had slipped back into his mind. Focused on the task, Ben swallowed the lump of bile trying to escape his throat. He took a steadying breath. “Tex, why do you always override my silent setting?”

“You are asking the wrong question, Junior Apprentice.”

“Am I?” Ben looked up to the moon in the clear night sky. This far from Las Vegas, the brighter stars pushed through the neon light pollution. His Master would say it was a good omen.

Tax answered, “Yes. You should be asking yourself, Why is my silent setting so easily overridden?” The robot paused in mock contemplation. “Perhaps you should have a word with your programmer...”

Even though no one would know, Ben pursed his lips to keep his amusement from showing.

Tex knew Ben programmed his own gear. The robot had taken a solid shot at him. The hallmark of the Golemcast models was to analyze the assigned student and use the best associated method to challenge them to greater heights. Apparently Tex had pegged him for humorous sarcasm.

Aware that it would only be around a short amount of time, the gorilla pushed Ben’s shoulder.

Ben nodded. “Tex, come to where I am and salvage what you can. Then, make an intercepting path to meet up with me.”

Tex replied, “Will do, Junior Apprentice, but this is a scrapyard. There is a lot to salvage.”

Ben groaned at Tex’s response and pressed his lips tight to keep his biting reply in check.

Unlike his past two companions, Tex registered when he was snide to it. Even though Ben couldn’t find the subroutine in Tex’s code to prove it, he would bet anything that the small robot spitefully performed worse until plugged back into the mainframe. “Salvage what you can from the spellcard and combat Orion had with a boar in this vicinity.”

A chime sounded. Tex noting his location. “Will do, Junior Apprentice, and will continue in stealth mode.”

Even though Orion’s time dwindled, Ben pressed Modes on his Anvilsmith and scanned the list presented. It went from Silent to Survival, and he noted his silent setting was still no longer active. He tapped it with a sigh and grumbled as he earmarked his next few programming sessions to create a Stealth mode. “Maybe that’ll keep him silent.”

Clearing the screen, Ben checked Orion’s remaining time—three minutes. He tapped the timer and set a vibration reminder for when thirty seconds remained.

He then pressed Modes and Map. The Anvilsmith went blank for half a second. A top-down view of Meadows Towing appeared. Ben had created it from various Internet maps and modified it with what Crystal had told him. A green dot lit where Tex marked his car’s location. A red dot marked where the boar’s body lay.

Ben took control of Orion. Through the gorilla’s eyes, he looked into dazed far off look of his vacant body standing there in full school uniform like he was lost simply lost in thought and not inhabiting a conjuration.

Using Orion’s strong arms, he scooped his physical body close, and continued moving through the desolate maze. Two turns and five lengths of crushed cars later, Ben came across another boar.

He released his body, relinquished control of the gorilla, and was back in his own body before hitting the ground.

Having recently dealt with a boar, Orion made short work of this one in the same fashion. This time, it did not offer Ben the detached tusk as proof of its good work.

The tablet vibrated the reminder.

Ben considered pumping more power into Orion, but the least amount of time was for another five minutes and would pull ten arcane watts from the Anvilsmith’s remaining ninety-five.

Having engineered a few devices able to store awatts from scratch and without guidance, Ben had become quite familiar with the measurement of arcane energy. A seven capacity laptop proved to be his top end.

Now he held a hundred in a tablet. Astounding.

As a matter of habit, Ben moved forward to have his hand in position to catch the small obdurium-steel strip that held Orion’s memory from this casting.

Ben patted Orion’s dense chest twice with a regretful smile. It saved him and battled for him. If it wasn’t so expensive to keep the conjuration around longer...

The gorilla disappeared.

With a practiced flick, Ben caught the strip and pressed the obdurium into the base of the Anvilsmith. Amazingly, it backed up the data in five seconds.

Ben beamed.

His first tablet, a refurbished Tsuku model he had modified five years ago, would have taken ten seconds for each real-life second that passed. This badass tablet copied a minute per second.

Ben nodded his approval. “Nice.”

Meadows Towing

A two-story auto shop sat at the center of the scrapyard. Across the second floor, above the six dark windows, squat fat letters spelled out Meadows Towing. Shadows filled the yawning mouth of the five work bays. Strange music, heavy on window-rattling drums and the sound of metal striking metal, screamed from the bays.

Though he’d expected something more formidable, the desolate customer waiting area—no less the maze-like columns of wrecked cars—made Ben doubt anyone ever came here, even during the day.

Like a gentle tug on his ears, the slight pull from the Inscription spell he had cast on the front fender directed his eyes.

Convertible top retracted, they had his Transcend up on a lift with the doors open. Gone was the standard, scintillating, candy red Archon Private Academy paint job. Matte black paint now covered every inch of his car.

Only a span of a hundred feet—without cover—separated him from his favorite gift.

Crouched behind the column of junked cars closest to the building, Ben pressed Spells. All the spells he had programmed during his time at the APA lay within the seven main categories of spell-type icons. He pressed the asterisk for enchantments. He tapped glowing eye icon for Soul Sight and noted options his old tablet never offered.

The old, one hundred and twenty feet max range now sat toward the left of a slider as the default position. The bar had thirty feet on the low end and topped out at six hundred. A second slider, duration, defaulted to a low of one minute, but could go out to ten minutes.

A ghostly image flashed behind his screen.

Ben fumbled the tablet and caught it. He’d forgotten about his addition of the animated background, and grabbed his chest. He made a mental note to change it to something less startling. He then slid the markers to the top end of the distance and duration bars.

The Cast button—which he had been so proud of when he designed it—looked like a burnt out neon sign. -50, the cost of the spell, lit behind it. Not part of the spell, red text appeared across the bottom of his screen. This will decrease current capacity by fifty arcane watts. You will have forty-five arcane watts left.

He smiled broadly before setting the spell back to the defaults. The note went away and usage dropped to one awatts. He’d have ninety-four left.

Ben remembered the emphasis of Master Reynolds’ annual commencement speech. “Never use more energy than you need.”

He stood and hovered his finger over Cast. His pulse quickened. His stomach tightened. He tried to shake the nerves away, but like the memory of the tusk being torn from the boar’s skull, his nervousness refused to leave.

Ben tapped the icon, and the Anvilsmith started shooting magical energy into his hand. Each mystic discharge resonated through his body, stronger and warmer than the last. The injections were at their quickest and strongest toward the end, and he realized he had forgotten to put his mouthpiece in only when his teeth chattered.

Ben preferred casting by SDs. The magic washed over and through him, but rebuilding the tiny spell cards was extremely time-consuming and quite expensive. Spells cast from tablets—as long as one doesn’t mind having magic forced into them—were effectively free of material cost.

His eyes tingled as the power settled in his irises. There were no living creatures in the spell’s range. He took another look at the windows for movement. None. He rushed across the opening.

In the garage, he felt the presence of three beings further in the building. If he could walk through walls, two were forty feet away and the other lay on the floor above him.

He looked toward the two on the ground level and focused his spell upon them.

Wall by wall, his vision penetrated the structure until he could see the shape of the two pale white outlines. Both were over six feet tall and built like professional football players. They had enlarged heads. He concentrated on their upward turned, pig-like snouts.

Involuntarily, Ben had held his breath. Since they wouldn’t hear him over the blaring music, Ben dared to quietly exhale. “Orcs...”

Having read many stories about their greedy and violent natures, Ben searched for the control to lower his car so he could get out of there.

The main panel just inside the garage had several buttons and levers, but none of them looked to be what he needed. He moved over to the stall with his car and searched there.

The spell warned him of a presence, big and powerful, coming from along the outside edge of the building.

“Shit.” Ben hustled up the lift ladder to his car and dove onto the backseat. “Shit. Shit.”

The Orc Master

The speakers blared the insane crashing music. Closer to where they rattled in their housing, Ben grimaced.

“Wha—” He lifted his hands away from the seat. The paint job didn’t bother him so much, but if someone had ripped out his leather interior and replaced it with crappy vinyl. Unable to see in the darkness, he squeezed the cushion and didn’t like what he felt or the plastic smell. “Someone’s going to pay for this.”

He shook his head. There’d be time to worry about that later.

Ben focused on the new presence closing in. It radiated power. A caster. Casters always registered stronger. His spell allowed his vision to penetrate the car door and the exterior wall to see a massive ten-foot body.

Its torso—longer and thicker than anatomically possible, even for orcs—connected to narrow hips. Its squat, powerful legs only made up a third of its height rather than half. The head sat thick on its shoulders like a short-snouted dog, and small horns rose just over its concaved ears.

Deep purple energy—Krotosian magic—emanated from the towering monstrosity.

The creature entered the work bays. It had to duck and turn sideways to squeeze into the building.

Ben caught a flash of light blue skin, a white t-shirt, and dark baggy jeans as it forced its way into the building. Voice deep and gruff, it barked.

The music shut off.

Its woofing continued.

Ben’s ear picked out inflection and structure to the barking. Since his mother had refused to teach him her native tongue, he had approached Adept Yeffaux—the Archon Private Academy’s Master Linguist—about learning Sylvan. Yeffaux’s high eyebrows arched higher at the request, before snidely stating they don’t teach that kind of language.

More than a hunch, Ben pressed Options, then Translate, and To Text. The Anvilsmith displayed Dwarven futhark. He knew Dwarven and this jumbled mess didn’t read like it.

The Anvilsmith flashed Orcish to English. A number one appeared followed by a colon as the futhark morphed into English. “Why aren’t you pigs out feeding the little pigs?”

A two followed by a colon blinked as a second deep, but not-as-gruff, voice answered, “They haven’t been back in a bit. We figured they caught an intruder and are dining on fresh flesh.”

“An intruder?” The massive teal creature asked, and the Anvilsmith italicized amusement in parenthesis. “You two better pray your pigs left remains or you’ll be honor battling tonight!” A pop-up window hovered over Honor Battle.

Honor Battle (v.) A ritual called by overlords pitting failed minions against each other in a fight to the death. The idea behind this outdated practice is to weed out the failures and grant the victor another chance to prove their mettle.

Two more white figures, more orcs, came into Ben’s spell range from deeper in the building.

The four orcs jogged into the garage. Two Colon pointed at each. “You, go north. You, south. You, east, and I’ll take west. Blow on your horn twice when you find something.”

The four orcs separated to their directions.

Giving them a little time to get far enough away, Ben laid on the backseat with the Anvilsmith on his chest. Dark streaks and splotches lay on the ceiling. How did they manage to get oil up there?

The being on the second floor stirred. He’d almost forgotten about it.

Ben focused his spell on it and felt power radiate. Great, another caster. This one smaller, human-sized—a girl—and framed with Argosian red energy.

His head shook in disbelief as his spell ended. He could have sworn the girl’s lips moved as if to say, “Help me.”

It wouldn’t be long before the orcs came across one of the dead boars. A part of him wanted to hit the button to lower the lift and peel out, but his starwise self knew he couldn’t leave an Argosian in the hands of a vile Krotosian.

Ben tapped the rust-colored GC icon on his home row and whispered orders for Tex into the Anvilsmith, “Get here, get the car down, and be ready to roll.” He then pressed Modes and Survival before Tex could reply.

Hoping, he tapped to Pop. The screen showed the effective radius of the weak teleportation spell. He grimaced. Just enough distance to get stuck between floors. No thanks.

Ben cued Soul Sight, topped the range out at six hundred, and pressed Cast.

His wattage tracker dropped to eighty-nine.

Twenty-six other life forms headed away from the building. He examined the cursory information. Searching, he wondered aloud, “Where’d the Krotosian go?”

His nervousness dissipated as he set his mind to saving the Argosian.

Ben climbed down from his car and entered the building.

They had built a kitchen into the customer service lounge and promptly neglected it. Odors of rotten cheese and rancid meat assaulted his nose before his eyes took in the slimy dishes piled in a sink. With each step something sticky pulled at the bottom of his shoes. The silver handle of a battered refrigerator, where it hadn’t been caked over by muck, shone.

In a hurry to leave the nasty kitchen, Ben turned and entered the den. The smell worsened.

A disgusting, gray slab of meat hung from a hook in front of a massive hundred-and-three-inch television. Part of it resembled a rib cage, but the rest didn’t resemble any animal Ben had ever seen. A legion of maggots worked the surface. Liquor bottles in varying stages of wholeness to shattered remnants covered the floor like mosaic tiles. Smashed glass formed sparkling mounds down the backs of the five battered sofas.

Given their relative cleanliness, Ben would bet the TV and four large concert-stage speakers mounted in the corners must’ve been new.

Two sets of stairs on opposite sides of the room led up out of the mess. Faint crunches accompanied each step as he moved to the closer one.

Buried under layers of crud and discarded wrappers, the staircase reeked with a sour tang. The center of every step had a sure, foot-wide strip of ground-in grime—except for the last two at the top.

He stopped short of them and leaned.

A business-quality wooden door stood to the left of the landing, while the right seemed to open into a hallway.

Ben considered the dirty and untrammeled stairs a moment longer.

All of these creatures’ strides were longer than his, but something felt really peculiar about those last two steps. Though he hadn’t taken anything from the Traps course offered by the school, the number of classes almost equaled the array that had to do with spells.

Samhain Shenanigans

Benjamin Baxter took a deep inhalation. Even though the large starwise only parking lots were full, the distinct Samhain Festival buttered popcorn smell extended all the way out into starwise overflow parking amongst the mundanes—the magic-less.

He licked his lips, and flipped the switch to close his coverable top.

Thrilled cheers rose in the distance. A round of faint applause chased it across the parking lot. Wondering what trick had been performed, Ben turned his attention toward the lit entrance so far away beyond rows and rows of cars.

Hoping to catch some remnant of the prestige, his gaze crawled along the Ferris Wheel, the Thompson Twister, The Screaming Meemie, and the various tents that filled the span between the rides.

Nothing. He snapped his fingers at missing it. Well, they’ll be more performances. That’s for sure.

The simple red, white, and dark lights of the festival held his interest in a way that the millions of Las Vegas casino lights blinking for attention never could. Only the click, click, click of his closed convertible top gear over cranking pulled him from the momentary entrancement.

One of the largest gatherings for Samhain Shenanigans in the country, the festival pulled every student from the Vegas Valley and thousands of students from schools from nearby prefectures.

With all the practitioners here, I shouldn’t be surprised that starwise parking is stuffed. Ben took a moment to center his red Archon Private Academy tie and got out of the car. He put on his tan A. P. A. trench coat to cover the huge star belt buckle of his Meadows Towing Might-Fist belt, and buttoned it closed.

He dusted one shoulder and then the other to activate a minor prestidigitation. A swift breeze whooshed down his body as the wrinkles in his clothes flattened out.

His mind went back to the popcorn. Every year, since he had the free first-year’s serving, he wanted to get a bag, but had always opted for a hot pretzel, garlic cheese knots, or cotton candy.

Not this year.

This year he had a plan.

He’d do a few games to fill his pockets with prizes before grabbing a bag of the buttery good stuff and casually munch on it as he strolled through the festival. Then he’d return each of following nights through Halloween for more games and treats.

The keyword for this year’s festival? Moderation. Slow and steady fun. Prolong the experience. Tonight would be great. Each night would be great so long as he stuck to his plan.

An odd tingling—magic—settled across his brow. A nearly overwhelming urge to take off his tie and leave it on his windshield washed over him and faded.

Ben scanned to find the source.

Two girls in Sunrise Mountain orange blazers, white blouses, and orange-and-white plaid skirts focused on him. One, dark haired, sported long pigtails. The other, a blonde, had her hair cut short like a pixie. Later than Ben to the first-night events, they’d had to park even further out in the mundane lot.

The brunette didn’t have the thin orange tie to complete her school uniform. She locked eyes with him and moved to get closer.

Bastion—the monster locked away in Ben’s head—roared and slammed into his temples. The beast tried to force its way through the bond that linked him and the monster together. It wanted to tear the girls apart.

Ben set his will against Bastion and wondered if he had been wearing one of the red, white, and black Samhain Shenanigans-logoed armbands to partake in the evening’s school-pride scavenger hunt, would he still have been able to resist the girls’ spell?

Bastion knocked around his head.

Denying the beast’s horrible desire to materialize proved taxing. Ben gave a strained smile and frequent grimaces broke his grin. “Sorry, girls.” He patted the part of his arm where the participation band would have been if he were in play. “But I’m not in on The Shenanigans.”

The brunette gracefully slid to close on him.

Ben backed away.

She gave a momentary pout before flashing a flawless smile. “Can I have your tie anyway?”

He shrugged. “It wouldn’t be worth any points.”

Temptation dripped from her playful lips as her tongue ran between them. “Can’t you imagine me with your tie on?”

The magical tingling on his brow came back strong before fading out again.

A vision of a girl wearing his school uniform came to mind, but not the temptress in front of him. In his vision, Penelope stood in Pepperjacks with his trench coat on. A sole lower button held it closed. Besides his tie, he didn’t know what else she had on under the coat, but wanted to find out.

Bastion slammed his temples again.

Ben grimaced. He stopped nodding to his imagination and switched to shake his head. “No. No, sorry.”

This time, her pout stuck and her blonde friend pulled her away. “Let’s get to the big top.” She gave Ben a playful sneer, the kind that causes those cute little nose wrinkles. “We’re bound to find friendly casters there.”

Even as she was being dragged away, the brunette steepened her hands and lipped, “Please.”

Ben gave a regretful smile.

She turned and fell in stride with her friend. Their skirts swung in unison for a few seconds.

The tie and trench coat vision flashed again. It had been almost a month since his run-in with Penelope. Ever since then, the hot, raven-haired beauty from the other side had become a constant in his dreams. Except for this recent vision, the Dream-Penelope still wore burlap. The bruises and scabs were healed, but her cutting blue eyes kept their edge.

He hadn’t even notice the color of the Sunrise girl’s eyes.

Faintly, Ben registered people yelling. He almost turned, but continued to the fairgrounds. Penelope crawled back into his mind and he focused on the memory. What had she worn after changing out of the makeshift bag-dress at Pepperjacks?

Reimagining her running for her life, a scaled hand closing in on her long, dark, trailing hair. Again, her intense blue eyes stole his focus.

Bastion bounded around Ben’s head. The beast whipped the black Nilosian energy there into a whirlpool which flash-flooded the vision away.

Annoyed, Ben snapped out loud at the creature in his head, “What?”

They didn’t actually share a language. Bastion felt primal. It probably wasn’t even capable of words. The only time they had any form of communication was during the combat with the ogre magispan class="underline">,/span> when Bastion motioned to Ben before pulling him in.

Ben stiffened. Bastion only reacted to combat.

From a ways behind him, a vaguely familiar voice called, “Yeah, we’re talking to you!”

Ahead, the girls dropped their playful walk and sprinted toward the carnival entrance.

Undaunted, Ben turned. He registered three bodies in hoodies—Dunn-Blatt or Clark casters—beyond three small, snapping green energy hooks shooting at him. Each hook trailed a wisp of emerald power back to one of the three hooded casters.

He dodged one.

The green hook flew past him. The faint line of energy dissipated.

Ben twisted. Too late.

The other hooks hit him in the center of his chest.

The faint lines of energy—challenge tethers—shone brilliantly as they twisted, strengthened, and locked Ben into a magic duel.

Hooked

Ambient dimensional energy flowed into the fetters binding Ben to the challengers. Not a valid target for the night’s game, Ben didn’t struggle for the dominant caster’s advantage. Instead he focused on the subtle rush that came with being in a duel.

Just under his skin, the hook dissipated when the emerald strands solidified and thrummed as though some great entity strummed to test the sound. A heightened sense of awareness—the rush of air bringing intoxicating scents from the food court, distinct clacks of the Bull Dog speed coaster carts being tugged up toward the first summit, that vague knowledge that nearby, other wills were pitted against each other—came to him.

Ben rubbed the growing heat in his chest. The feeling spread into his hand. He stroked his neck and, like a topical cream, the warmth spread there, too.

Neither challenger noticed his lack of a participation band. The two hooded casters had turned toward one another and, in unison, said, “Let go.”

Ben had watched Jameson Brown’s exit interview when the World Dueling Federation forced him out for not having won any of his first twenty-five professional matches. When the interviewer had asked Brown why he kept competing instead of quitting from embarrassment, he bounced in place like a jacked-up aureole addict. “The better the competitor, the better the buzz.”

As though plugged into the world, Ben finally understood. His eyes narrowed in suspicion. Bastion had relaxed. Why?

The shorter one pushed the other. His voice an angry squeak. “He’s mine!”

The last thing to come to Ben through the tethers, the challengers’ intent. Ben found himself become even more nonchalant about being hooked. These two were at war with each other. Being connected to both, Ben could feel the deep-seated disdain between them.

This play for perceived power further unfurled as the taller guy pushed the smaller one back. “Let go.”

From the voice, the taller caster had been the one who called out to him. Ben shook his head. Both were so petty and desperate to scavenge for Samhain Shenanigan items.

The smaller guy pointed to the tether in his chest. It pulsed a pale, neon green. “My hook hit first!”

The taller one grabbed the other by the collar. “Let. Go.” He shook the smaller boy hard in time with each word.

Ben had been hooked for the first time three years ago when he’d just turned thirteen and had to take Adept Love’s Intro to Dueling class. Malcolm—a bully—whose birthday fell nine months earlier, had tethered him. The hook felt like a real fishhook forced into his skin. Though there wasn’t any blood, the pain burrowed cruelly up his arm before tearing to the center of his chest. Ben had dropped to a knee and struggled to keep from tearing up. Nothing would’ve been more embarrassing than crying on his first day of Dueling.

Before Adept Love had made it over to them, Malcolm had towered over him, mumbling insults about Ben losing his birthday gifts from the school and calling him a baby for crying, even though he had successfully held back the tears.

The taller boy jammed his knee into the smaller one’s crotch.

The smaller boy collapse, but clung to the tether.

If being hooked would always remind Ben of Malcolm, he’d have to do something extreme to change it. But what?

Ben had often wanted to get back at Malcolm, and had formed several plans, but the bully had been kicked out of the Archon Private Academy. The faculty didn’t say why, but since Malcolm often hooked sixth and seventh graders, it had to be for conduct unbecoming of an enlightened individual.

The tether from the small guy faded away.

Competition between them done, the intent of the guy with the remaining fetter came through clear. He wanted to do permanent damage and take as many scavenger hunt items as he could instead of obeying the mandatory limit of one per duel.

Though not a part of the multi-school event, Ben loathed bullies. He walked down the tether toward the hooded figure towering over the one on the ground. Closer, the purple and black of hooded zip-ups became apparent. Dunn-Blatts.

The victor flexed over the downed one and had been speaking softly. He spun to face Ben. “Give up four items, Ape, or I’ll break you and take your car.”

That snide tone. No way. Ben leaned to the side to see into the dark hood. Magical shadows kept the face in darkness. Ben’s throat constricted with growing rage. “Malcolm?”

The tall boy pulled the hood back. “Baby Ben!” The magical darkness around the face vanished. Much taller and skinnier now, that same aggravatingly smug smile still haunted Malcolm’s stupid face. “Do you still cry when hooked?” He chuckled and pointed. “Look, boys, I think I see tears starting.”

Ben’s fist balled. A primitive desire—smash that hooked nose—went through him. His muscles tightened. The direction of power through the fetter between them changed. Energy flowed in Ben’s favor. To assure every iota of his anger would be felt, he projected his menace through the tether. “We’ve a score to settle.”

That only add fuel to Malcolm’s smugness. “Oh.” Malcolm glanced to Ben’s arm, where the Samhain Shenanigan’s band should have been. “You aren’t in the hunt?”

As the one challenged, it was up to Ben if he wanted to end the duel. Adept Love had chirped endlessly about that rule and, by Ben’s count, he had three years of anger and two fonts of magic to unleash on the bully.

He held tight. “You’re not getting off that easy!”

Malcolm blew him a kiss then extended his hands palms up. As if cued to the motion, two mystic whirlwinds appeared.

One next to him.

One next to Malcolm.

The swirling vortexes siphoned power from their tether. Wind flapped loose, dull gray robes, signaling the imminent arrival of Primaries.

No! Ben opened his Argosian font to try and blast Malcolm with pure power, but his energy drained off to the forth-coming Lesser Judges without so much of a flash of color. He closed his font.

Hoods drawn, both appeared in the thick official robes of the Las Vegas Magistrates. Each teleported into being with their two feet long battle rods—the true symbol of their power—at the ready.

The tips of their batons crackled with red energy as the two dour Argosian men scanned the area for greater trouble.

A third set of robes flapped. In an instant, the wearer materialized. She wore the same dull gray uniform, but her rod hummed with orange Vibrosian energy. Without taking time to appraise the situation, she demanded, “What is going on here?”

The third Dunn-Blatt—Ben had forgotten about him—helped the one Malcolm kneed to his feet. The three of them kept silent.

Ben struggled to keep a civil tongue and found himself at a lack of words. Anything he might say would be hash and pointed at Malcolm. His personal limit met, Ben kept his mouth shut. Actions could be explained away. Words could be quoted, and if he opened his mouth, he’d only regret it when the grey-robed Magistrates reported it to the head of his school.

The vibrant orange glow on the tip of the baton dimmed. She gripped it with her free hand and looked them over. “Junior Apprentice? Bravados?”

Malcolm tried to loosen the hook.

Holding it tight, Ben rocked with the small mystic tug in his chest.

Malcolm said, “A simple misunderstanding, Primaries.” He shot Ben a be cool wink—as though things could ever be cool between them—and gave another tug. “I, along with my Junior Bravados, thought this A. P. A. student was in on The Shenanigans.”

Ben shook his head slightly and held the tether.

Malcolm tugged again and narrowed his eyes. “It’s become obvious. He isn’t.”

“You do not have an armband, Junior Apprentice.” The Vibrosian Primary pointed her battle rod at Ben. “Release the Dunn-Blatt or risk censure.”

Wishing the fetter would whip to slap Malcolm across the face, Ben relaxed his will and muscles. The hook came free. Without flair, the tether between them dissipated.

Malcolm’s hand stashed something into his pocket. Probably his tether totem.

Ben’s jaw tightened. Was the totem still the same rusty nail Malcolm had used to hook him years ago?

Smiling at Ben’s building anger, Malcolm rubbed his hair opposite the Magistrates with his fingers crossed. He gave a small laugh. “Sorry about that, friend.”

The energy faded from the Primaries’ battle rods. The two Argosian Primaries spun a quick circle. Air sucked from where they were headed, their gray robes flapped a cotton candy smell before they teleported. Small pink and pale emerald dust devils swirled together in the lot where they once stood.

The Vibrosian Primary turned to Malcolm. “Be careful where you throw your hook, Bravado.”

“Yeah.” Ben did not want to say anything, but found his mouth echoing the Magistrate as he continued to stare at Malcolm. “Be careful.”

She pointed her rod at Ben as an unspoken warning. Behave, it said.

He continued to stare at Malcolm and a light thumping in his head—Bastion—urged him on.

The Magistrate angled her wrist back and directed it at Ben a second time. Another unspoken warning. You are not behaving. An orange glyph lit the tip. “Look elsewhere, Junior Apprentice.”

Ben looked up into the night sky. The light pollution from the casinos stole the grandeur. He focused on the North Star, wishing he could call it down to slam Malcolm deep into the earth.

She said, “Now, to the fairgrounds, you three. Be vigilant. Have fun.”

Holding his position, Ben felt them walk past.

The first one, the tallest—Malcolm—bumped his shoulder as he passed, whispering something too low for him to catch, but what Ben thought had been said—lucky baby—burned in his ears and sent Bastion tromping its rage through his head. Ben struggled to find his center.

As much as he wanted to go at Malcolm, he had to keep his cool lest the Primary ban him from this season’s festival. Still, his rage continued to build...

Useless Words

A distant roar of excitement rolled from the fairgrounds. Though curious, Ben ignored it and let his eyes wander from the North Star through the rest of the Little Dipper. Having birthmarks in a similar pattern on his face, spanning from one cheek to the other, Ben always thought of it has his constellation. The fading smell of cotton candy piqued his desire to get onto the fairgrounds again, but he had to wait for the—high and mighty, power-tripping—Magistrate to excuse him.

She finally snapped her fingers for his attention.

As he supposed, unless he wanted to be booted and be in trouble when the next school eighth began, Ben faced her and granted immediate eye contact.

Vibrosian energy flooded her eyes.

Ben looked into her orange orbs. He’d only seen one other caster—Ur-Krurk—do this when the ogre magi wanted to blast him to bits. Could this protector, one of Las Vegas’s regulators, be thinking of doing the same to him?

The magic drained from her eyes revealing brown irises. She asked, nearly demanded, “What were you thinking, Junior Apprentice?”

Filling his mind with the void between stars, Ben blanked his thoughts to block having them read. Before learning about mind reading a month ago, he had always thought the reactions of others coinciding with his thoughts intriguing. Now—like G. I. Joe would say—knowing is half the battle.

She inched forward, paused, and looked deep into his eyes. Concern eased into her voice. “Were you thinking?”

She didn’t insist on him answering the first question. Keeping his block in place, Ben nodded.

Her fists knuckled her hips. Indignant, she asked, “How did you think you would fare against three Dunn-Blatts, here, in the parking lot?”

Ben continued looking into her eyes. In a blink, he steeled his thoughts.

The Magistrate’s lips parted, and she failed to fully suppress a startled gasp.

“No offence meant, Primary, but my personal trials and battles are mine alone.” Bringing his Courtmanship studies into play, Ben bowed fifteen degrees. The perfect angle to ask for permission from any caster not directly over him. “By your leave, Ma’am.”

With annoyed wrist flicks, she waved her baton under his face to dismiss him.

He turned and walked toward the festival.

Flapping cloth—her teleporting away—sounded behind him.

The long walk ahead of him, Ben’s mind kept going back to her baton waving before his eyes.

Ben’s parents forbade him from dueling. Heck, they had objected so strongly—to his great embarrassment—at the Arcane Private Academy, where he went to learn magic, that the school excused him from their minimum dueling requirements.

As such, he had only witnessed the baton—a widely accepted symbol of social standing, enforcement, and personal power—from a distance. This close to one, he became certain he’d seen a similar rod fairly recently, but it hadn’t been in a Primary’s possession...

A replay of the Magistrate’s baton waved before his mind’s eye. He stroked his chin, murmuring thoughtfully to himself. “Where’ve I seen one of those before?”

Mundane Problems

His absent gaze only a few feet ahead of his black dress shoes, Ben made sure to keep them clean by avoiding the hastily lain chalk lines in the mundane overflow lot. His thoughts bounced between jerk-faced Malcolm, the hot Sunrise Mountain girls, and the misplaced memory of a Magistrate’s battle baton.

The rough gravel lot gave way to smooth blacktop with uniformly spaced parking spots separated by paint instead of chalk. The swells of thrilled crowds grew steadily louder as he closed on the fairgrounds from the mundane overflow lot, to regular mundane parking, and now, closer still.

Absentmindedly, his hand played across the thick bundle of Magic Fair winnings in his pocket.

A proud smile formed on his face.

He gave the wad a conscious squeeze.

Placing in the Junior Apprentice/Apprentice group brought five times the reward as the Initiate level, and had netted him more tickets than his prior six years of prizes combined.

He had earned seventy-two tickets. Two for participating, twenty-five for Grand Prize in Efficient Construction, another twenty-five for Grand Prize in Circuitry, ten for second place in Spell Programming, and a bonus ten had been bestowed upon him for taking the fair’s Outstanding Ingenuity award.

The judges had gawked over the circuit board in his spellcards. They couldn’t seem to get over the overwhelming simplicity of him having moved the arcane resistors closer to the thin obdurium strip. Between that and working the path of his printed circuits from the obdurium he had made the card need less arcane wattage to activate.

About to envision what the large Junior Apprentice prize plaques would look like above his smaller Initiates awards, voices—either unhappy or pissed—rose from the joyous background buzz.

Ben lifted his gaze from where the white parking lines ended, and froze.

The Shame on Sam Hain protesters were back this year. He counted the twenty of them. Their numbers would swell over the next two days.

These people were why Ben came before Halloween. Anyone coming too late on the actual All Saints Day would find this group impossible to wade through. Worse yet, the mystique—the buffer that kept most of the mundanes from seeing magic and magical beings—would be stretched so thin that they’d be able to see any nearby caster.

Ben waited.

A few of them looked around, scanning over where he stood.

As long as he remained still, or only moved when they weren’t looking his direction—perhaps if I creep very slowly...—he’d go undetected.

Most were in idle conversation. All of them held large signs usurping the glory of the spindly iron wrought Samhain Festival entry arch. They protested the festival with Bring Back Orange And Black and This Halloween is Not What it Seems. They also railed against its main organizer, Sam Hain, with Shame on Hain and Hain is Insane.

Three years ago, as the new President of Koffman’s Clockworks, Hain took control of the festival. His change in theme colors from brown and orange to traditional red, white, and black—for blood, bone, and ash—brought more magic-users to what had become, arguably, the best Samhain festival in the country.

Ben looked back over the chocked-full parking lot. Cars whizzed down Sunset Drive. Several sets of headlights moved through the overflow lot to find a spot, but no one walked toward the entrance. I really should’ve come earlier. Ben pressed his lips together, took a deep breath of the popcorn-laced air, and mentally prepared to interact with the Mundanes.

Ready to trudge through, he took one step.

“Don’t go in, son!” A rotund man in a loud, orange, Halloween-themed button-up shirt locked eyes on Ben, and waved a Red, White & Black Is An Attack sign at him. His voice deep and serious, the man continued, “The Koffman Corp is slowly turning this festival into Devil worship.”

Ben entertained a whim about sharing the true origins of the Pagan holiday. How much would this guy freak out if I went into the details covered in Adept Roman’s two Hidden History courses?

Neither of the classes had a lick of magic. Ben had wanted to skip them, but he fell into the three percent of students attending the Archon Private Academy who didn’t come from Pagan families, which made taking both mandatory. Like Spell Programming, Hidden History had ten levels that spanned multiple school eighths, but he didn’t know anyone going that route.

Ben nodded and arced to walk around.

The man pressed closer. He smelled like pastrami.

Ben began to arc wider.

Turning the sign around, the man waved a red, white and black Hain Is Heinous at him. “Don’t you see?” The man’s hot breath reeked of coffee. “Hain is trying to shape the holiday into something wicked.”

Ben kept arcing to the edge of the entrance like a slow-motion soccer ball hooking toward the goal pole. Hope I hit the net. “Sorry sir, but I won tickets—”

“I’ll buy them from you!” The closer they go to the white chalk line marking private property, the faster and louder the man spoke, “Just don’t go in!” They reached the white chalk line marking the threshold to private property. “How much you want for them?”

Noticing his angle would be off from making it across at the entrance, Ben stopped.

The man did, too. He thumbed through a wad of mainly black and green ink on gray paper; mundane money.

Scanning the substantial number of—they’re called dollars? Yeah, dollars—for the red on white forge-strong notes backed by the Anvilsmith Dwarves, or the orange on pink monetary units issued by the Sunrise Mountain Sisterhood, Ben saw none.

Having been raised as a Mundane until the age of ten, Ben had nearly forgotten just how much it would take to turn dollar bills into real currency. A term—pennies on the dollar—came to mind. What were pennies again? The exact meaning lay lost in his childhood memories, though he figured the exchange rate would be similar. Suddenly, he grasped that the man thought he would be purchasing regular ride tickets. Embarrassed at his own belated realization, Ben’s cheeks began to warm and he grinned at how dim he felt. Why would a mundane think of anything besides mundane attractions?

Ben took a quick step to cross the thick line.

Trying to keep pace, the man moved, too. Some of his money threatened to come loose and the man paused to pinch the bills.

Just enough hesitation for Ben to take the final two steps across the line. “Sorry, sir.” He turned and bowed a small courtly apology before walking backward. “But I really need to win some goldfish.”

Conjurer’s Course

Cheers rolled from the opposite end of the midway games, near the entrance. The air positively brimmed with excitement. Ben had been hoping the attendant with Cody on his badge at the Conjurer’s Course would share some of the fragrant spiced apple cider on a slow simmer in the booth, but he hadn’t. Still trying to warm the guy up, Ben smiled with an appreciative nod at the Devils & Dragons midway worker as the employee deposited another four goldfish SD cards into his second bulging bag with an amazing lack of enthusiasm.

The attendant—brain-dead on his feet—only came alive when cheers rose in the distance and he searched for what had happened.

Ben wanted to think of the guy as more than just The Attendant, but Cody hadn’t performed anything that could possibly pass for the customary introduction. He took out his last ticket. Crap, I totally blew my plan to only play a little each day.

If the usual attendant, Gary, had been here, Ben would’ve shared his plan with him and Gary would’ve made sure he stuck to it. The only game Ben ever played, he had gotten to know Gary over the years and—more so now than ever—truly appreciated the man’s passion for the game.

Ben shrugged at the slightly older teen with long oily hair and a scant beard that looked like he suffered from mange. Gary had kept his red, white, and black harlequin vest clean and pressed. This guy, from the looks of various stains, seemed to mainly put his uniform on when he ate.

Wishing he’d stuck to his plan, Ben extended his last ticket. “I don’t understand why more people don’t play this game.”

“Because this game sucks.” The Attendant’s voice came out in harsh wheezes. As though it were Ben’s fault he had the crap-job, the Attendant snatched the ticket and gave it a vicious rip. The usual red, white, and black sparkles flew from the tear. He folded a ripped half and let the other go. Like flash paper, it disappeared into a falling cascade of lights. The Attendant leaned back against the wall and used the other half of the voided coupon to scoop dark gunk from under his nails. “You’re the only guy dumb—” He bit off the rest of his wheeze and peered at Ben through his oily bangs with raised eyebrows.

Ben’s eyes narrowed. They both knew what the rest of the sentence would’ve been. His neck craned back and Ben forced his lips into a grim line. “Dumb enough to play?”

“Look,” The Attendant motioned down the row, trying to make his point. “This game is at the end of a long row of much better games.”

Ben didn’t turn to see. He didn’t have to. He had to work his way through the throngs watching people at the seven Wrath of the Evoker booths—one more than last year—and the mass of people trying their luck at the Illusionist Shooting Galleys. Each booth on the way to the Conjurer’s Course had a dwindling number of people waiting to play. With tickets in hand, a couple of younger kids had followed Ben this far only to turn back with dissatisfied groans that their curiosity hadn’t paid off.

The Attendant unfolded his arm to full extension, leaned, and pointed with the ticket. “Win three times at Wrath and you get a Fireball.” The Attendant spread his fingers wide. Released, the spent marker flashed away. “A flipping Fireball!” Alive for a moment, an unimpressed sneer twisted the Attendant’s lips as he flopped against the wall again. “Compare that to this...” He used a limp wrist to roll his finger up the prize hierarchy in his booth. “One, goldfish. Three, cat. Nine, wolf. Twenty-seven, tuzvul. Eighty-one, treant.”

As though pointing out lameness sapped his energy, the Attendant’s arm went limp at his side. He motioned with his nose, barely raising his chin, as he continued. “Almost two-fifty for a minotaur and thrice that for a dragon.” He then flicked Ben’s first bags, brimming with goldfish spellcards. “You’re good at this, man, but the best you can do is win a second treant.”

Seeing the Attendant in a new light, Ben leaned away. He understood where he and the Attendant had a serious disconnect.

Since the guy worked the booth, Ben had thought they were alike. Now, he pegged this guy as exactly the type of caster he—because of Gary’s annual there’s more to magic than flash-bang lessons—despised. If he’d had this guy’s narrow view of magic only being useful for combat, he wouldn’t have survived his encounters at Meadows Towing.

Ben asked, “Mind telling me if you went to school around here?”

Fully materialized, the conjured frog croaked a ribbit to remind the player—him—that the game stood ready.

“Yeah.” The Attendant leaned against the wall and watched the frog. “I did.”

Ben extended his hands. Mystic reins to control the frog rose to his palms. Ben grabbed onto the invisible, leather-like strands, and he started the course. He directed the frog to make it hop only on the few yellow saucers polka dotted amongst a long field of large white plates. “Have you ever won three on Wrath?”

“Uh, yeah.” The worker wheezed and chuckled as though Ben had made the understatement of the century. “More times than you could dream.”

To advance, Ben released the controls when the frog landed on a small yellow plate, ending the first leg. The formerly invisible controls shimmered green when the frog vanished. Ben bent at the knees and caught the falling reins to stay in play.

A well-mannered spider monkey appeared on the left side of the game field. Ben directed the monkey to pick up darts, aim, and pitch them at a column of lavender balloons. One by one, they popped in succession up toward the violet one set at the top. Ben asked, “You ever cast a tuzvul?”

He caught a glimpse of the Attendant rolling his eyes. “More times than I care to remember.”

Ben had a hard time believing that, but let it go. After all, the guy did work at a place that gave prizes away for every type of caster in the Las Vegas Valley. He could’ve come across one and stolen it.

With the two spare darts unused, the top balloon popped. The monkey vanished. Ben again leaned down to snatch the glimmering green controls which turned invisible in his hands.

A small air elemental pushed the pinned flaps of the top two balloons around.

Ben had the elemental form a tornado. He dipped the bottom it in the bowl of water to suck up some of the contents.

“And?” The attendant prompted.

Ben focused on the elemental. Like all conjurations, it excelled at repeating tasks. The trick? Showing it how to do it right the first time. Ben had it raise the water in the tornado, move to hover over an empty bowl and release. Guiding the tiny tornado back over to the bowl of water, he asked, “Ever cast a goldfish?”

A hard tilt bent the Attendant’s neck. If his hair had been made of liquid, his bangs would have run down the side of his face. His upper lip rose and his jaw loosened, adding an exclamation point to his confusion. “Huh?”

Ben nodded at the elemental and released the reins. The controls flashed green until they hit the counter and faded. If he needed to make any changes to the commands, he’d be out of luck, but the tornado continued moving the water without further instruction.

Rummaging for the last of the red ones, Ben dug through the prize box of dusty goldfish spellcards and said, “No one ever casts goldfish.”

Ben could feel the Attendant’s bewilderment increase. Casters who think of magic the way the Attendant did could never see the use of casting a goldfish, and thus would never consider the container the conjuration came in as anything of value.

Yuletide’s Yield

Having five seconds before the next attack, Benjamin Baxter scanned the throng of starwise patrons around him at Bauman’s Bazaar. Five. The sea of brightly colored robes, cloaks, and wraps of the shoppers receded, clearing a forty-foot radius around him.

Four. A handful of shoppers and hawkers—who had stopped lending their voices to the constant chorus of sale barking—watched his plight.

Three. None had the intense gaze it took to control the ongoing spell and none were willing to help—and, worse, he didn’t see a hint of tan trench coats anywhere. Where are the guys?

Two. Ben spun.

The bright metal of the whirling scimitar—a blade he had only seen in use by bodyguards from the middle east—reflected the corridor of lights vendors had set up to highlight their tents, tables, and wares in the largest outdoor night market in Las Vegas.

One.

Centered on him, for some reason, the tumbling blade stopped as the pommel seemed to press against its range thirty-feet away near an abandoned pewter mug at an abandoned table. The steel morphed into a rapier—or is that a cutlass? Which one is it that pirates use again?—pointed at his chest.

Now.

It shot at him.

Ben twisted sideways and bent.

The blade swooshed by. In its wake, the scent of delicious spiced cider.

Keeping his gaze on the blade, Ben jammed his hands into his coat and came out with his Anvilsmith tablet and mouthpiece.

Five. Though he didn’t need it anymore, Ben jammed the mouth guard in as, by muscle memory, his fingers worked his tablet to press Spells, Enchantments, Achilleus, and Cast. The welcomed scent of fresh-cut pineapples pillowed in his nose as the spell flowed into him, winding his fast-twitch muscle up for action.

Four. To keep up appearances of what people were used to seeing technocaster do, Ben quivered his arms and worked his chin as though the magic had to be forced into his body.

Three.

“Daddy!” A small girl in a long, absurdly pink, full-length fur coat screamed and pointed at him.

The man in red furs next to her grabbed the child’s upper arm, scooped her into a defensive hug, and bellowed, “Ape casting!”

Two.

A fierce-faced woman—the mother—leapt in front of the man and began to work the air to build a mystic barrier. She wasn’t alone. Eyes wide in surprise, fear, or wonder, over a hundred casters’ hands worked the air to throw up protective power to shield themselves, and loved ones, against his magic. More people had been keeping an eye on him than he had thought.

One. Ben hadn’t seen this many spells thrown at once since the Arcane Alehouse wizards had stacked dozens of Hold spells on him. They have no idea what spell I cast. This knowledge made him smile around his mouthpiece. He sucked at the pineapple that had worked into his saliva, and turned back to the sword. It had already switched back to a scimitar. Ben stood sideways to present a smaller target. Now.

It whirled at him.

He waited.

It closed.

Leaning, Ben slid back.

The sword whooshed pass his chest.

He snatched at the hilt as it rotated—got it!—and found something small in his hand as the bright blade dispersed into red whirling mist.

The ghost of the spell flew on and faded.

Having cheered and applauded with crowds in the past when someone used flair to end a spell not of their casting, Ben spun to take in the crowd with hungry eyes and ears.

“Tradition’s blight.”

Instead of appreciation, insults where thrown as the crowds—which had formed a communal protective magic circle around him—began to move away. Tinted the same colors as their various robes, their translucent mystic barriers popped like a rainbow bubble and sparkled away.

“Lack wit.”

The circle around him stretched into an oval as other bazaar buyers began to move through.

His eyes found the face of the little girl in the pink fur coat scrunched up in a tiny scowl as she stared at him over her father’s shoulder. “Nobody likes you.” Innocent disdain clung to her words. “Go home, ape.”

That slur! Reflexively, Ben’s fist balled.

The Nilosian font, the energy Ben regarded as belonging to Bastion—the monster in his head—flashed hot. Boiling, his vision dimmed momentarily as The Beast raised its head.

Ben tensed at Bastion waking and tried to relax. I can’t blame her for her parent’s bias.

Committing her face to their memory, Bastion sneered at the girl.

Ben’s brow furrowed and he sneered.

No! Having expressed Bastion’s reciprocal disdain, Ben covered his face. Diffuse your emotions, Ben. Cool down. He closed his eyes and lowered his head. There’s no way to change their prejudice. To them, their casting method will forever be pure and superior while ‘techno-wizardry’ will forever be an affront to ‘true magic-users’ everywhere. His jaw and fist began to loosen.

Recalling the hard lesson he had learned from the Arcane Alehouse, Ben wanted to yell, None of us are real wizards. Instead, he took a deep, calming breath. She’s not a threat, Bastion. He took another breath and insisted. She’s not.

Unconvinced, Bastion snorted. Wary, it went back to rest.

That was close. Focused on his shoes—month old Tore Vex boots he got through Meadows Towing—the seams remained slack. His feet weren’t growing to bastion-size. He exhaled his relief.

Adept Love had, in his nasal whine, warned against coming to Bauman’s Bazaar which had set up in Vegas for a week before moving to Los Angeles next month. “It’s a den of derision,” he’d said. Love had been filling in for Senior Adept Collins, who went absent after the Samhain Festival. “You may be attacked, openly, and no one will come to your aid.” The small man’s face took on a shrewd smile. Everyone knew Bauman’s Bazaar was the only place where an Archon Private Academy student could get the spells the Academy wouldn’t—or couldn’t—teach. “Which is why I’m breaking you all into groups of four. You will be responsible for each other.”

Ben’s throat rocked at the memory. “Hmph.” Responsible for each other, ri-i-ight. Having been attacked, he temporarily forgot that he, Neil, Kevin, and LeRoy had agreed to split up to find vendors who sold technomancy spells. Remembering, Ben shrugged. Guess Love knew what he was talking about.

Curious about what he held, Ben opened his hand to see a miniature duplicate of the scimitar in his palm.

“Hey, showman,” a high-pitched feminine voice called before he could really analyze what he had in his hand. “Give you a gold for that.”

Risky Business

Ben sucked one last time at the pineapple flavor in his mouthguard before he pulled it out. The effect of his Achilleus spell persisted and he found it hard to keep his amped-up, thrumming body still. He closed his hand and looked to where the voice had risen above the clamor of vendors selling and shoppers haggling. He picked up on something he hadn’t noticed earlier. Everyone’s dealing in one ounce units of precious metals...

No vendor offered or accepted local, regional or global currency. Currency was backed by an institute or agency which would go after a seller if you got a really bum deal. No one backed ordinary gold or platinum. Wow, guess all sells are final.

“Right here.” A tall, bald, slender woman—that’s a really long neck—raised a hand. She stood in a light green sleeveless dress before a ten-foot wide emerald canvas tent. One of the flaps had been pinned inward showing a bare hint of what lay within the tightly packed rows. Something about her—the large eyes?—made her quite comely. Her neck scarcely bent, giving him the slightest degree of a courtly greeting.

Ben made sure to return the gesture. That probably looked fast-forwarded. He focused and gave a proper—so slow—bend of his neck.

She nodded in return. “You did well in defending yourself, trencher, so why not profit from the momentary inconvenience?”

Trencher. Elder Komir had call him that, too. Hearing it again made Ben smile. Heck, why not?

“I’ll give you two gold.” Another woman, almost alike in every way except her dress had full sleeves and she stood in front of a red silk gazebo. “One and a half for the spell focus and the extra for the wonderful show.”

“Two and two silver.” The lady in green counter-offered. “My first offer was low just to get your attention.”

“Two and five.” Confidence accompanied the second’s bid as she motioned to the opening to her gazebo. “That’s the highest price it will fetch.”

Ben gently squeezed the small blade in hand. If that’s the most it’ll fetch here, what’s it really worth? Better yet, do I even want to sell it? While he wouldn’t dare take the tiny thing home where his family could find it, it would look rather nice in his basement lab at Meadows Towing. I’ll hang it next to the soldering iron.

The first woman, who Ben—lost in thought—had turned to face extended her hand to the red tent as well. “She is correct.”

“Lies!” A squat rotund man called from across the way. He stood before a crimson-and-violet stripped pavilion made of hard, opaque plastic. His dense, parted mustachio wound two wide loops on each cheek. “I have a cousin who collects such items. If you look closely, ape, you’ll see two tiny gemstones on the pommel. It points to its origin and true value.” The man hooked his thumbs on his thick black belt. “The info is free and I’ll give you the truest offer. Three gold.” He raised his chin. “Neither gazelle will top it.”

Though Ben had made his mind up on keeping it, the man calling him ape made him want to prove a point. He looked back to the women. Long necks. Large eyes. I can see why he called them that.

The woman in green bent her neck slightly, again, but both signaled open palms to the man, conceding to his bid.

Though the passing crowd, Ben examined the man. There’s something about him… besides him calling me ape… Ben couldn’t figure out what about the man bother him, but there was something there.

The mustachioed man raised his head a bit higher and a slight smile spread his face open in pride of winning Ben’s business. Figuring Ben would follow, the man turned and walked to the door of his store. “This agreement is beyond far, but the focus will thrill my collector cousin to no end.”

Ben turned and bowed to the woman in front of the green canvas tent before approaching her. She was the only one who extended any courtesy. He made a point of speaking loudly, hoping the man would hear him. “Though your offer was the lowest, I would like to see what you can offer in trade.”

Her neck bent again and, this time, her body folded slightly, too. “I will be honored.”

“Three and two!” The man called. “A full ounce of gold more.”

Ben did not look back as he moved to her tent.

“Three and five! No, four full!”

Ben crossed the threshold. The din of the bazaar faded, then fell silent. Soft music, like a string quartet playing from beyond the door behind him, took the place of the hustle and bustle of the marketplace. Sandalwood incense filled his nose as he took in the twenty-foot depth of tightly packed rows of similar cherry wood shelves covered with various traditional knickknacks, brick-a-brac, foci, totems, and spell components. Dangling from the center of the tent, a brass brazier caught his eyes.

“Rawk. Right this way.” A green parrot with a hooked yellow and red beak whistled, and repeated, “Right this way.” Its perch appeared to be the handle of a strong box in the far left corner.

Guess she’s not worried about being robbed.

Next to the bird, the woman pushed on the canvas back wall. With a pop, it parted to reveal to a secret room.

Okay, that’s cool. Making sure to go to the opposite skirt, along the edge of the tent opposite the parrot with the wicked beak, Ben carefully hustled along the narrow walkway to get into the back room. She’s got spells! He spied the SD cards on a shelf in a glass display. Of his schoolmates, he’d been the first to find one of the rare merchants who had items to sell to technomancers. A bit less carefully, Ben picked up his pace and pressed the Anvilsmith’s volume button down twice to signal the rest of his group.

The fact that he might be walking right into a trap didn’t occur to him... until after he crossed the threshold.

Relax... Relax

A soft lavender scent—almost the exact scent mom keeps at home—filled the seven-foot by seven-foot room. To the immediate left, a small round folding table with a pale green checked table cloth. Floating inches above the table, a manila ceramic teapot with cherry blossom trees—they’re moving—painted on the side. The falling petals look so graceful. As the tiny pink flowers rocked to the base, a sense of serenity eased into him.

While he’d thought about raising his guard as he stepped in, as soon as he entered the room, all semblance of worry slipped from him.

Cool. A cherry blossom had spiraled away from the teapot to land on the side of one of the two thin-lipped manila tea cups set upon similar ceramic saucers. More drifted from the pot to the cup, which filled from the bottom up releasing a fragrant—oolong?—brew.

Voice softer in the quiet room, she said, “Feel free to take your coat off.”

Ben didn’t much feel like taking off his trench coat. Due to the magical enchantments placed upon it, he never felt discomforted from it and it regulated extreme temperatures to nothing more than either a slight chill or a subtle warmth. Still, it sounds like a good idea.

Checking to see if Bastion, who had a supernatural sense of when things were about to go wrong, had cause to be wary, Ben found the beast soundly asleep.

Well, why am I not surprised? A faint, pleasantly warm fog filled his mind. With how peaceful this place is... He slipped off his coat and looked for a place to hang it.

“There.” She extended her long arm to point a long finger at a single-peg coat rack in the opposite corner. It stood at the foot of a long, narrow emerald green canvas camping cot—heh, it and the blankets match the walls—which, coat-rack notwithstanding, ran the full length of the right wall.

Something about the bed—no, it’s a cot, cots aren’t comfortable—felt inviting. His nerves jumped.

“Don’t think about the bed.” She gave his shoulders a slight rub before giving a mild directing push. “Just hang your coat on the peg.”

Ben did. A price tag—two hundred and fifty... ‘Two hundred and fifty’ what? Is that the number of days that I’ve worn it?—flipped from the tip.

“Don’t forget your tie.”

“Oh yeah.” Did I want to take off my tie? With the wonderful warm fog filling his head, Ben found it hard to tell. Why’d I come back here in the first place? In answer to this thought, his shoulders gave a lop-sided, drugged shrug. Well, I took off my coat. He slipped the red silk tie off and looped it over his coat collar. The rack sucked the tag back in and flipped another from the tip. Two hundred and seventy-five. Weird. What does that mean?

“If it chafes...” She began.

Ben faced her.

Nothing remained of what he thought the woman out front looked like. Instead—the dress is the same—a young lady, very similar to both Penelope and Alice—if the medusa didn’t have scales—stood. The two semblances seemed to struggle against one another as though uncertain which visage it should take.

She took a step toward him. A soft lilac smell—Alice’s scent—washed over him and all traces of Penelope faded. Voice tentative and hopeful, a human version of Alice suggested, “You can hang your tablet harnessss too.”

What’s with the hiss on harness? Ben recalled Alice ticking off common misconceptions of her cursed race. She isn’t sibilant. The warmth in his head cooled a bit. He patted the holster that kept his Anvilsmith at easy reach over his leg. “No, I’m good.”

“Sure, understandable.” She said. All hint of hisses vanished. She lifted the two ceramic cups with cherry blossoms settled on the base, sat on the edge of the bed—it’s a cot—and extended a cup to him. “How about we sit and have some tea?”

Without thought, his arm extended to accept. Ben pulled back just short of taking the cup. Wait, Alice can’t stand me! The fog vanished.

Kevin, who always talked as though he were in a competition to get the most words out in a minute, chattered. “Come out from wherever you are, Ben. We got your location ping.”

Tone confident and sharp, LeRoy called. “You know you’re not going to scare us.”

Ben glanced to the canvas wall separating him from the main store. A light from the other side projected Kevin and LeRoy’s shadows on it. When he shifted his gaze back to where Alice had sat on the bed—cot—the tall, bald, lanky woman from early sat there, sipping tea... And had been there the entire time. Well, I think she’s been there...

“Oh good. More customers.” From her expression, the tea—or something—put a bad taste in her mouth and made her words sound bitter. “Perfect timing.”

Something weird was going on. Ben tried to recall exactly what, but could only recall cherry blossom, oolong tea, and the smell of Alice’s skin. Why am I thinking of Alice? Better yet, why’d I take off my coat and tie? He snatched both from the peg, gave the woman a dirty look. Trickstress.

She shot him a tight smile.

The glass rack of spellcards, which has been there all the time, seemed to sneak up on him.

Ben jumped away. Whoa, that’s right. Spellcards. He called out, “In here, guys. Check this out.”

Something Like Friends

Though LeRoy, Kevin, and Neil had done a great deal of haggling and some buying in the green canvas tent, Ben had remained a few steps behind. First, mentally, as his schoolmates worked hard for the best deal, then, physically, as the three of them left the tent and had to come back for him to pull him along.

In fact, the four of them had walked well out into the expansive dirt parking lot and located their cars amidst the thousands—if not tens of thousands—of hastily parked vehicles before, still smelling lavender, Ben finally started to come back into his own frame of mind—they’re like scattered cherry blossoms—puzzling out the, mostly horrid parking situations much further away from the bazaar.

If the Bauman people laid down chalk parking lines, everyone would follow suit.

Late-comers were often the third, or fourth car blocking in people who had come early. Others parked to the side of a horizontal row meant for two cars to pass, narrowing the lane to one, in which—if two cars came toward each other with too many cars behind them—the lane would become yet another row of parking, locking in even more cars.

And thus his earlier plan to have at least have one direction to get out by parking side-by-side—Kevin’s luminescent orange flame-tipped next to Ben’s matte black—backed-in behind Neil, and LeRoy’s A.P.A. approved, stock, bright reds had been foiled.

Both sides—as far as the eye can see—had been blocked in. If this were my event, I’d have lines drawn and offer valet. Ben found his head shaking. “This is atrocious.”

“Oh, he’s back.” Kevin rattled, “Welcome back, Ben.” He raised a powder blue spellcard with a large white energy bolt painted on the flat which branched out to seven strikes high near his crazy brown swath of windblown hair. “Check it. Chain Lightning.”

Trying to focus on the spellcard, the mental image of raining cherry blossoms and phantom smells of the woman’s back room finally faded to the buzzy ozone smell of too many arcane-powered vehicles in close proximity. Each of schoolmates, in their school uniform of white dress shirts, red ties, brown slacks, and tan trench coats, leaned on the corner of their cars facing the space between them.

Not remember anything after having parked, Ben tried to quickly piece the night back together. We came right after Spell Programming, split up. Someone attacked me with a sword. No... He opened his hand and rediscovered the small masterfully crafted light, high-quality silver, three-inch sword whose hilt alternated between strips of cooper and steel. The ruby chips... The husky vendor had the highest bid, but I... I went to the lady in green...

“Hey, wizzes.” A guy in a dark trench coat and long oily hair called to them from the end of the row.” For five hundred Strong or seven hundred M.U.s, I can get your car out. Then a second ride for half as much.”

Wizzes. Ben used to toss the friendly, casual slang for unknown casters quite a bit. Now—we’re all sort of delusional—now it just felt false. No, it’s pretentious.

“Nah, wiz.” LeRoy called back. “We’re good for now. Please hit us up later though.”

“You got it.” The guy waved and walked on.

Ben asked, “How can he get our cars out.”

Offhandedly, LeRoy answered, “He’s a porter specialist.” As though that explained everything, he turned his attention back to Kevin. “Nice buy.” LeRoy shuffled several cards and presented a silver one at his hip near his red leather belt held closed by his Top Junior Caster belt buckle. The low angle helped the lighting from the Koffman floating lights to highlight an embossed sword. “But not nearly as hot as my sweet Mage Sword.”

Ben wanted to pry into porters, but his thoughts were still preoccupied. She— She bewitched me and tried to rob me. He balled his fist on the blade. It bit into his palm. Ow. He relaxed his hand and kept his fist closed so the cut could heal before being noticed by the others.

Kevin laughed a challenge. “You can’t cast seven stones.”

LeRoy shrugged. “You cannot cast Chain Lighting.”

Kevin and LeRoy are jaw-jacking again, and Neil’s off—as usual—in his own little world. None of them probably wouldn’t have noticed if he held his hand opened and showed how the small cut on his bloody palm was healing shut.

LeRoy flipped the SD card over his knuckles, making it dance on top of his hand. “Perhaps you should master Lighting Bolt first?”

Ben winced. Low blow! While, between the four of them, he could out program and engineer the others put together, Ben wouldn’t have dared to brag about it. LeRoy, on the other hand, had made direct reference to the spell he used to finish Kevin, twice back-to-back, to become the school’s Top Junior Caster for last school eighth.

Kevin stopped laughing.

LeRoy drove the point. “I mean, it should come naturally, now, since you know what it tastes like.”

“Want to go right here?” Kevin pointed to the ultra-narrow, walk-side-ways-only lane between the cars that had them blocked in. “Go ahead. Step out.”

This spiraled fast.

Nonplussed, LeRoy rocked his head on his shoulders. “The duel was supposed to be a best of three match... You didn’t even take one.”

Oh, no! Ben extended his arm to stop Kevin from moving to the row to call LeRoy out to duel.

“Move, Ben.” With contact being frowned upon, Kevin stopped short of Ben’s arm. “All I need is one.”

LeRoy flipped the card over his knuckles again before putting it into his pocket. “Easy, Kevin. Do you think the Magistrates want to be pulled from the Bazaar?” He crossed his arms and pressed more of his weight on his car. “This is like their vacation time.”

Kevin’s spoke slow dread through clenched teeth. “It would only take a minute.”

Strength left Ben’s arm. The hawkish nose, flat cheeks, pronounced brow. Kevin looks just like Collins when the jerk threatens us...

“Less, actually.” LeRoy slid his hands into his pocket. “What’s up with you, Ben?”

Ben studied Kevin’s face a bit longer. Could the number-two caster and the Senior Adept be related?

Kevin stole a glance at Ben.

“Uh.” Ben shifted his eyes to LeRoy, and lied, “Nothing.”

Finally moving, Neil pushed a few strands of his white hair behind a pigmentless ear, and held up two of his four cards. One had a clear case to show off the circuitry within while the other was black with a faint gray line. Voice soft and steady, he said, “I don’t know which I am more proud of...” He presented the clear one. “Wind Wall.” Then the black one. “Or Enervation.”

Ben eyed the black card. What’s Enervation?

“Neil the Techno-Necro-mancer, you gotta know it’s the Enervation,” LeRoy answered with a sneer as though the question lay leagues beyond stupid.

Kevin’s chin relaxed a bit as he raised a leg to his car and, in his normal fast patter, agreed, “Hands down.”

Clever. A slight admiration kindled in Ben for Neil; the smallest, and softest spoken of the them. He changed the topic and neither of them seem the wiser.

“Yes, it is necromancy, which I adore.” Neil slid the black card into the pocket of his heavily starched shirt, presenting the clear one. “And yes, it is more useful in combat, but this one completes my collection of standard three-stone spells.”

What? Ben’s ears rose, and his focus shot to Neil who still eyed the card. I know he comes from a wealthy family, but if he has all three-stones... Not sure if his question strayed into an area considered too personal, Ben asked, “So, you have all single and double stones too?”

Neil nodded absently as he bent over the card, putting his pigmentless face closer to it for inspection instead of raising the card before his powder pink eyes. “Interesting. There’s a faint brick wall in fine white paint.”

“Wait.” Kevin stood again. “You mean to tell me you wasted coin on Erase?”

Neil bobbed his head again. He ran a finger on the flat. “Talk about craftsmanship. The paint is in miniscule grooves.”

Kevin waved a hand. “Man, that’s the most useless spell in the world.”

Having programmed it for extra credit, and used it to keep Collins from seeing a letter of complaint he had composed against the Senior Adept during Spell Programming III, Ben ventured to disagree, “It has its uses.”

“How?” LeRoy shook his head. “Okay Ben, there you are, standing across from me at dueling length. How would you use it?”

Ben opened his mouth to try and back out of LeRoy’s hypothetical before it could accidently spiral into a real challenge. Another flash from earlier in the night came to him. Crap. I had a vision of dueling him, but we were between tents. Man, I really don’t want to—

Neil interjected, “Ben doesn’t duel.”

“In this example, he does.” LeRoy looked from Neil, who hadn’t stopped marveling at the card, to Ben. “So, there we are, hooks in and ready to throw.” He stood and, in an instant, drew his hand from his pocket as though he held his tablet. “Somehow, in this fictional world, you gain the dominant caster’s advantage.” Staring into Ben’s eyes, LeRoy took an aggressive step forward into Ben’s personal space.

What are you doing LeRoy? The manner of approach meant ‘go time.’ What’s this about? You don’t like someone disagreeing with you?

Bastion—the Nilosian monster that could steal control of Ben’s body—remained fast asleep. In its slumber, the beast uttered an annoyed grumble at the challenge.

LeRoy stared intensely.

Tension seized Ben’s shoulders, back, and brought his brow into a tight knot. Man, I really don’t want to duel you LeRoy… Ben stood up straight. I really don’t.

Quiet Confidence

LeRoy’s breath smelled of bacon.

You want to start something from nothing? Ben took a small step forward, tightening the narrow space between them and a faint, invisible static, as though they were Tesla rods attracting dimensional energy, built between them. I may not win, but I’m not going to slink away.

“Shit.” Kevin leapt forward to get his arm between them before they bumped chests.

Counter to the seriousness of the moment, a group of people—they’re enjoying themselves, why can’t we be like them—laughed. Staring into LeRoy’s African brown eyes, Ben found an intense pinprick of cobalt blue at the center of the black pupils.

“You have first bang, Ben.” LeRoy gave a dangerous grin. He lowered his voice to a threat. “I dare you, piss it away on Erase.”

“First, I don’t start fights.” As he said the words, Ben tamped down the desire to cast Erase on LeRoy just to see if the Top Junior Caster would have attacked him. “More importantly, tactically, it’d be a waste again you.”

LeRoy nodded a, I didn’t think you would nod. “Exactly.”

Ben added, “However—”

Breath hitched, Kevin bristled.

LeRoy’s eyes narrowed.

Neil looked up to them.

Ben continued, “—since we’re talking fictional events.” He gave a dismissing wave to negate LeRoy’s scenario and took half a step back. “Say you and a traditional caster are battling for real. Life or death. No minimum distance. You both have just enough juice for a single low-level spell.” He slipped his hands into his coat pockets and dropped the miniature sword as he turned a small circle.

Paying them no mind, Koffman Lanterns floated above patrons moving to and from the bazaar.

Ben stepped back, bumping into Kevin’s arm which bumped into LeRoy. “So, there you two are. Eye to eye. Nose to nose.” He yanked his hand from his pocket. “He pulls a scroll!”

Expertly, LeRoy said, “I blast him.”

“Yeah,” Kevin agreed.

“Really?” Ben’s brow eased. He didn’t even think to try and rip the scroll away. His eyebrows raised. “It’s not enough to take him down. He’s mystically shielded.”

LeRoy blurted, “I punch him!”

“Ah.” Ben stepped backward and raised a finger. “Your spell hits, but he’s made of sterner stuff. The strike lands, a solid shot, but we’re not martial masters so it doesn’t knock him out.” Ben took another step back and leaned on his car.

LeRoy’s eyes bounced around his sockets as he searched for another answer.

Ben added, “In fact, this trad-caster is well practiced at concentrating through such damage and activates the scroll.”

Rapt in the scenario, knowing that LeRoy would have to eat whatever came, Kevin found the breath to ask, “What spell is it?”

LeRoy raised his chin and tightened as though he were preparing to take a punch. “Yeah, what spell?”

Ben hadn’t thought the scenario that far. Not important really. You’re already cooked. He shrugged at the two constant contenders for Top Junior Caster. “It could be anything, but to be sure, it’s offensive and, remember, traditional mages can fit up to four spells on one of those scrolls. So, after the first, another would come, and another, and—most likely—another. Then, he still has juice for a personal spell.”

Stunned by the reality of being totally screwed by his choices in the scenario, LeRoy stepped back from Kevin’s arm.

Dumbfounded, Kevin still stood there with his arm out like a crossing guard at an empty street.

“Tactics, LeRoy.” Ben peeked in his Transcend to check on Tex. The other guys’ knee-high Golemcasts where there, but not his. Darn it, Tex. If the others check their robots, they’d see his missing, and then the awkward questions would come. Hoping none of the guys would, Ben returned his focus to LeRoy. “The main difference between you and me—in this scenario—is that I would make a play at grabbing the scroll and using my last arcane watt to erase the magic.”

LeRoy frowned slightly. “But you’d still be at an impasse and he’d have a tick up on you.”

“Yeah.” Kevin lowered his arm and moved back to let his car support his weight. “What then?”

Ben gave another shrug and chastised himself. I’m starting to act like Jek. He looked away to the Bazaar, taking in the glorious spectacle of so many Koffman Lanterns hovering—they’re like stalking butlers—to light people’s way out into the parking lot. “Well, being civilized, we could call it a day and go our separate ways.”

Kevin shook his head hard. “No. You said it was life or death.”

“So, I did.” Ben lifted his gaze to the night sky. He found the North Star. Just one arcane watt...

The horrified expressions on the Old Henderson orcs’ faces when blasted their life from them came to his mind’s eye and took roost. Expression left his face. The justifications—they had Clarissa. They would have killed me—still didn’t ease the guilt.

Tonelessly, Ben said, “Then it’s ‘may the most determined man win.’”

“You mean the best man.” LeRoy correct.

In an internal quagmire, Ben shook his head. “Winning doesn’t make you the best.”

“Wow.” LeRoy cast his gaze to the sky as he fell back on his car. “That’s deep.”

“Yeah.” Kevin nodded and did as LeRoy had. The two of them had a long time rivalry. While one might be the best for several school eighths, the other could pull out a win to take the Top Junior Castor belt buckle. No matter which one held the title, they tended to mirror each other.

Since looking up, Ben had felt Neil keeping a steady eye on him. Scrutinizing.

“Why are going this deep anyway.” Ben tried to shake off his sense of woe. Plenty of time for that later. He cleared his throat. “Bauman’s Bazaar is right there guys. There’s bound to be more sellers. Plus, I haven’t had one mug of spiced cider yet.”

“Me too.” Kevin sat up. “And I still got money.”

LeRoy echoed, “Me, too.”

“Then back into the den of derision we go.” Neil tucked his clear spellcard away and stood. “Until cider come from your noses and moths from my pockets.”

Ben laughed and clapped with LeRoy and Kevin, but wondered. What does he mean by that?

Neil

Searching for other vendors with technomancy wares, the four of them crossed back into the heart of the bazaar and split up again… Or at least they were supposed to. Ben kept catching glimpses of Academy-trench coat tan when he least expected it. One of them is following me. Still, Ben wondered aimlessly through the bazaar, rarely pausing.

Ben came to a full stop. In the valleys of the hawkers calling out, he heard and—mmm—smelled bacon frying. He was standing at the corner of a pale orange and blue striped pavilion. He feigned interested by passing a curious glance over the wares in the rows and rows of glass cases with tiny glass boxes of powders, herbs, and fluids of various transparency before fixing his gaze on the deep fried bacon balls on sticks, freshly rolled in maple.

The vendor, an elderly Asian with a huge, mean-looking, twelve-legged spider tattooed on his face, eyed Ben and muttered in a Far-Eastern language.

That doesn’t sound pleasant or welcoming. Hopeful, Ben approached the man.

“For paying customers only.” The man waved him away. “Go feast your eyes somewhere else.”

At least he didn’t call me ape. Ben turned away. When he did, he got his best look at the flash of tan following him at it ducked behind two large whiskey barrels stacked atop each other. Must be Neil. Too short to be either LeRoy or Kev. He had a clear view of both sides of the barrels. Whoever it was, couldn’t slip away around a corner like before. Ben headed back to the hiding spot. I have to know why.

He had made it most of the way there when a large, burley man in a long-sleeved golden shirt and red overalls stepped from a crimson dome tent with yellow and orange paisleys. The man seized something near the barrels, lifted it, and flung Neil like a sack of potatoes into the main thoroughfare.

The crowd of colored robes scattered away from Neil like frightened cats.

Can’t believe how quiet everything got. Nearby hawkers fell silent. The immediate din quelled. Sales from rows over spilled in. Having just been on the inside of such a circle for the first time a short while ago, Ben scanned the crowd to note what kind of view the others had.

“We don’t serve your kind!” The man barked and pulled a narrow—is that bone?—wand as he closed to only ten feet from Neil.

Being Ernest

“Well.” a woman with a husky voice called, “if it isn’t Mr. Evil Overlord.”

Though he hated being called by his name, Evil was well practiced at not reacting to hearing it. He lifted the thin metal lid to the industrial dumpster out behind Norwest Grind. A sour smell of milk turned bad wafted from the bin as he tossed in the two p.m. trash. While his insides shivered at the thought of his great-grandfather’s lackeys finally finding him, Evil couldn’t help but shake his head at the break in simple Norwest Grind procedure.

He used the smell, a recurring problem, as a means to stay in character as Ernest Smith Junior, the son part of the popular mother/son coffee shop.

No one wanted to take the trash out because of the smell. If everyone followed the simple procedure he had put in place of rinsing out the various empty milk and cream containers and bagging them properly, there wouldn’t be a smell to contend with. Evil released the lid and let it bang closed.

“Salutations, E-vil.” This gruff voice, a second one, was male and sounded just like his great-grandfather’s, but the words didn’t have the suffocating telepathic heft.

Fully aware that the voices came from his right out toward the mouth of the alley that spilled into the strip mall’s employee parking lot, Evil glanced left as though he had heard them from that way.

Per lease standards, the three sets of shops’ gray-black back doors to the dead end left of him had their dumpsters and pallets pressed neatly against the walls. If need be, he had a totally clear path all the way to the gray-black back door of G14, the Army Surplus store that he owned through a shell company. While his great-grandfather would have dozens of ways of destroying the building in a blink of an eye—in which case he’d be totally screwed anyhow—the lackeys wouldn’t.

Unless the orders had change, they were to bring him back alive. And, rightfully fearful of his great-grandfather’s wrath, none of them would risk causing an iota of damage over what it would take to capture him.

Movement along the three-story roofline above G14 caught his attention. A rifleman in bulky SWAT style body armor had shifted to drop his cheek against his weapon and eye the scope.

Kicking into high gear, the inhibitor vest that Evil had purchased from Jimmy Alcazar warmed and thrummed softly against his chest under his long sleeve hunter-green Norwest Grind polo and yellow apron. Carrie Smith, the mother part of the coffee shop, was a proud Oregon Duck graduate and, as a luminary in the community, she incorporated the colors into her company, including hunter-green jeans and yellow vans.

Though mostly nerfed by his inhibitor, Evil’s TA—his tactical awareness, the power that annoyed him the most—dimmed the world slightly to highlight the rifleman. Then, in an instant, five other riflemen were popped from the background. Because they were mostly blocked by the ledge, his power couldn’t tell how tall the shooters were; but it noted their general shape for future indexing and advised their distance away.

While he couldn’t help but notice the first one, he made no outward gesture to let on that he knew about the others.

Looking up at the rifleman, Evil raised his hands in the air with his fingers spread.

The riflemen were good news. The two speaking from the mouth of the alley weren’t his great-grandfather’s lackeys. All members of the Peacekeepers were too full of themselves and power-proud to make use of lowly riflemen, even when they would offer an overwhelming advantage. Like now.

Evil felt like he had missed something in his reaction. What else would a non-powered person do if they had a gun pointed at them? Was he supposed to cry? Babble for his life? Wet himself? His mind raced for the elusive answer.

The woman said, “Relax.”

Familiar with the area, Evil’s TA laid out the alley behind him with the four other stores to the mouth of the alley. The voice came from two feet inside the alley, precisely where she had originally called to him the first time.

Evil didn’t relax. Though he’d missed something in his reaction, they hadn’t noticed. He began to ease his way to the back door to Norwest Grind.

“Not so fast.” The woman said, “Turn around.”

Evil did. His TA lit them and the two Streit Cyclone SWAT vehicles that thundered in to block the alley.

Eighty-five feet away, both the woman, 5’6” and curvaceous in the ways that made Evil’s teenage mind take note, and the skinny 5’11” man were decked out in full black tactical gear. Though their armor looked like typical SWAT armor, they had black visors over their eyes and they didn’t have weapons of any sort.

If they were non-powered in full gear, they’d have weapons on their hips or, like the riflemen above, have the gun butts against their shoulders. Their lack of typical weapons screamed that they both had some sort of projectile power: laser beams, ice shards, kinetic blasts; something.

Both of them started to close on him. While the woman was more business, on a direct path, the man sort of sauntered along, lagging back just a touch.

The woman stopped four feet from Evil. Closer, her being an inch shorter didn’t factor in. Something, maybe her authoritative tone, made her seem taller.

With her hand out, she ordered, “Ident.” She sounded annoyed.

Slowly, Evil went to his front right pocket.

Since they weren’t attacking him or arresting him, they were buying his cover. He dipped his hand in his pocket, pulled his wallet, and took out the real Ernest Smith’s ident card. He placed it against the hacked government lo-jack transmitter on his neck, and—money well spent—the star-spangled glow of his holo-ident card presenting Ernest’s information lit the side of his face.

Reading, she took a step back.

The guy finally made it to stand next to her. He raised his visor, revealing pale skin and eyes slightly obscured by brown mist. A telltale power indicator. Evil had seen similar effects before, but the abilities range from powerful eye beams to inoffensive air purification. Since only a couple of the Power League’s front men and leaders went without masks, the mist wasn’t enough to nail down an identity.

Focusing on his face, Brown Mist said, “Ernest Smith. J. R.” He glanced at the projected info and then split his focus between the corners of Evil’s eyes and the corners of his mouth, the usual glitch spots of—illegal for non-costume—falseface overlays. “Where were you last night?”

“Kyoto, Japan.” Evil answered without hesitation. Jimmy Alcazar’s falseface was better than anything available to most. This would test just how good.

The real Ernest Smith loved jet-setting and, as part of the deal of Evil taking over the humdrum everyday aspects of Ernest’s life, frequently updated his journal in a private cloud server. A journal Evil read often and occasionally left notes in. Evil’s entries were usually short, advising Ernest of what was being done in his absence. A few times Evil prompted Ernest to call his mom; those prompts always came after she dropped a surprise visit on the Norwest Grind that Ernest typically worked out of and Evil had left her standing there.

Evil said, “I was at the opening of the first Norwest Grind in Kyoto Station.” Making sure to keep his tone respectful, he asked, “Why?”

The woman grumbled. “It’s legit.”

Thrilled, Evil kept his emotions in check.

She turned to Brown Mist and whispered, “Damn it. Another false lead.” She stalked away and spoke at her wrist. “Roof and perimeter teams. Stand down.” Though it looked like she was holding back her anger, she hauled off and kicked a dumpster. The industrial bin whined as it buckled and slammed into the wall.

Evil jumped at both sounds. Nerfed, his TA couldn’t hone in on exactly who she was from her body and gait, but the kick narrowed her identity down to three Power League brawlers: Peach, Viper, or Granite. This kind of operation—not to mention the all-black uniform—wasn’t Peach’s style, and Viper always seemed too in control of herself to allow that kind of lashing out. Though it could be any one of the three, Granite was the odds-on favorite.

“This is a little embarrassing.” Though Brown Mist still kept a sharp eye for a glitch, his voice took on a modest tone. “We had intel that one of the company employees here is wanted.”

The guy had worded his accusation carefully. He didn’t say, we heard you were the great-grandson of Supreme—the most powerful ultrahuman on the planet, grandson of Ultimate—a villain the world never got to appreciate, and son of Perfection—the man who nearly eradicated everyone of Chinese decent by targeting markers in their DNA with genetically modified food. The guy also didn’t say I believe you’re innocent and you’re free to go.

Though Evil’s false identity wasn’t meant to hide from the Power League, he swallowed in relief. It was strong enough to stand up to their scrutiny. Jimmy truly was a genius.

“Well.” Evil put the ident card back in his wallet and the wallet back in his pocket. “If it’ll help, I can call everyone in so that you can interview them.”

“No, thanks.” Brown Mist shook his head. The mist that obscured his eyes faded, showing earth-brown irises. “The guy we’re after comes from a line of real bad news. So, sorry about all of this...” He motioned to the riflemen along the roof and the SWAT vehicles. “And for taking up your time.”

Evil understood that his great-grandfather wanted him back under control, but he hadn’t done anything to anyone to warrant the Power League coming after him.

Grasping for understanding as to why he was wanted, Evil asked, “If I may, what’d the guy you’re after do?”

“Nothing.” Brown Mist’s shrug looked weird through the SWAT armor. “At least not yet.”

“Oh.” Evil frowned as he fought the logical follow up question of, then why are you after him? He felt as though he had asked the one question that someone who is not used to seeing a show of force would ask. One of the many things his training had taught him was that looking—being—too composed was as much of a flag as asking too many questions.

Granite raised her arm at the SWAT vehicles and wound her hand in some circles.

The vehicles crept back.

Brown Mist turned to leave and turned back. He motioned to the mangled dumpster. “Hey, tell your landlord that he’ll be getting a check from the League about that.”

Evil nodded. “Will do.”

“Thanks.” The guy extended his hand.

Evil’s nerfed TA alerted him that the guy had removed his tactical glove a split second before their hands made contact.

They shook hands.

Brown Mist’s grip seized up and clamped hard. His jaw locked. His eyes glossed over with inky black. Soft pleading groans worked in his straining neck.

Evil whispered, “Shit.” He grabbed onto the guy’s thumb with his other hand and worked to get free.

If it had been just a regular handshake, nothing would’ve happened. It would’ve just been a typical parting gesture that Evil had done countless times since he and his mother fled their home country that his great-grandfather controlled.

However, the guy had to have tried to do something sneaky, a mental or emotional trick of some sort, to be ensnared by the psychic trap that was woven into Evil’s psyche by Tar—his father’s top mentalist—before evil had uttered his first word.

Focusing, Evil struggled against the confining mental yoke from the inhibitor that made it feel like someone had slipped his powers a pill that put them in a constant coming-out-of-a-coma stupor; which, originally, was the plan. He had worked with Jimmy to make the design stronger and had willingly put it on. His powers were a link, a legacy, to his father’s side of the family and Evil wanted nothing to do with them. But right now—

Right now, Evil summoned every iota of mental control that he could muster. Hoping it would be enough, Evil looked the guy in his blackened eyes and quietly ordered, “Let. Go.”

Fighting to Stay Free

The alley behind Norwest Grind rocked side to side.

No.

It was still. Nothing had moved at all.

But it sure as hell felt like the earth had just rocked back and forth. Not enough to take your feet from under you, but strong enough to nearly make you swoon.

Filling Evil’s nose and mouth, the spoiled cream smell from the dumpster intensified. His stomach lurched as though he had decided to chug a quart of expired milk. Breathing—his, Brown Mist’s, Granite’s, and the riflemen on the roof—roared like double-hauling big rigs tearing down the highway.

Brown Mist’s eyes widened and the blackness budged outward to form oblong balloons stretching to make contact with Evil eyes.

This wasn’t real.

Couldn’t be real.

This was just like the time when Evil’s dad had told him to try and read him when he was four. It was the first time Evil had experienced true terror. The worst thing his four-year-old mind could imagine—his dad abandoning him at the beach with faceless, dog-headed strangers with lobster claw hands—had held him fast.

His father said that he had only waited a few seconds before pulling little Evil out of Tar’s trap; banishing the terror that haunted his nightmares for years. A nightmare that, after a stressful day, would still drop by to make the night insufferable.

No!

Evil yanked to get his hands free. Though ten years older, he knew much more about the world, how it worked, and didn’t want any part of the kind of horrors that waited for him in Tar’s trap.

Brown Mist’s fingers were like gas-powered pistons holding Evil in place.

Not only had his mental command to make the guy let go not work, but—somehow—it had caused some sort of feedback loop in the trap that worked to reach out to him. To grab him. To pull him in.

No!

Evil leaned back.

The blackness in the man’s eyes took on pincer-like appendages that snapped at him.

Held in place, Evil dodged.

Left.

Right.

He kneed Brown Mist in the junk.

The guy’s hand popped open.

The alley snapped back to normal. No wobbling. No horrendous taste or stench. No whooshing breath. Just the steady ground that the earth—barring earthquakes—always provided. That and the slight whiff of bad cream in the air, and the revving of the Streit Cyclones as they trundled backward.

Granite, who had been motioning the trucks to back up was still doing that motion.

It had only been a split second.

Black tears, a thick morass, dangled from Brown Mist’s eyes to his cheeks. Reacting in slow motion to whatever tormented him the most, his brow knotted behind his knitted ski mask and his mouth began to open. He’d start wailing soon.

When Evil’s TA was at full strength, it would let him know paths to take, the best moves to make; it’d optimize everything for him over the next few minutes to give him the best chance of success. Nerfed, it could only make him vaguely aware of threats. For the first time in his life, it was up to him to figure out the best move.

About to head back into Norwest Grind, his TA flashed four faces of customers—new customers—who had been in the lounge drinking coffee for hours; not quite fitting in, but not standing out enough to make Evil think twice about their prolonged presence. At least, not until his TA flashed their faces.

He didn’t know who they were, but they would play some part if he went back in.

Casually, Evil walked toward G14 at the end of the alley.

Running would alert the riflemen.

It was best to act as if all was normal until Brown Mist started wailing. Then, all bets would be off.

Evil passed the first set of doors. Two more.

Granite said, “Come on, Dreamweaver, let’s load up.”

Evil’s eyes widened. Dreamweaver was a world-class psychometrist. While not in the Power League proper, Dreamweaver often freelanced for them and law enforcement—and anyone with the dough—to help find whoever they paid him to find.

Passing the second set of doors, Evil pulled his phone, typed 777 and hashtag. The pre-programmed code sent a message to Ernest Smith Junior alerting him that the jig was up and that he should immediately enact the fallout plan. In three days the plan would give Evil a bad reputation, but it would leave Ernest and Carrie Smith with plausible deniability instead of dragging them into being complicit in helping him, which shouldn’t have been a crime but—because of his legacy—probably would be.

“Dream?” Granite said, “Come on. Wheels up.”

Evil passed the next set of doors. One more set and he’d be one last length away from slipping free.

“Hey, Ernest.” Suspicion slipped into Granite’s voice, “Where you goin’?”

A gut-wrench jagged yell filled the alley. Freed from the molasses of his mind, Dreamweaver let loose with one after another after another.

Now! Feet pounding the ground, Evil sprinted past the last set of doors.

“Shoot!” Granite yelled, “Take him down!”

Evil’s TA alerted him to the movement above. Nerfed, his powers didn’t tell him anything else. There was nothing he could do but run harder.

Muffled gunfire rang out.

The pale, electric-blue pinpoint forcefield that he had built into the inhibitor vest flashed around him.

Rubber bullets thumped around him.

Ahead, the six deadbolts and lever locks on G14’s back door clacked and unlocked in rapid succession. The sensors picked up on his proximity. Good. Money well spent. The door flew open.

A deep, baleful wail closed in fast behind Evil.

Hoping to dodge what he figured was a speedster, Evil dashed sideways.

Something large and green sucked wind as it whistled past. It slammed into the reinforced doorjamb and wall with the cry of twisting metal.

An industrial trash bin, one bent out of shape from a super-strength kick and throw, blocked his way into G14.

Eyeing an emergency ladder, Evil used his momentum to launch from pallets to the top of the upright garbage bin, and leapt for the bottom rung.

Used to moving faster and being stronger, his legs didn’t even take him halfway.

His forcefield flashed as he bumped into the cinderblock wall and fell in the corner.

The gunfire stopped.

Dreamweaver’s wailing continued.

Evil popped up to his feet.

Feet thumping hard on the ground, fists balled, Granite sprinted at him.

One of the riflemen yelled, “Kick his ass!”

Evil got some distance from the wall and put his fists up. Studying hero combat was a must and he knew Granite—with her superior body armor—tended to fight a little sloppy and favored headshots.

Her right fist came at his jaw with deadly intentions.

Evil ducked and swept her lead foot.

Reeking of cigarette smoke, she sailed past him and slammed into the wall, shattering a body-sized hole in it.

That was nothing. She’d be back on her feet in a moment.

Evil tore off back the way he’d come.

Dreamweaver was on his knees and arched back with his hands on the sides of his head.

Evil passed the first set of back doors.

The two SWAT vehicles rolled back into position to block the alley.

From over the top of them, a svelte woman—in the same black tactical gear—came flipping into the alley. She could be any one of a dozen on the Power League’s roster. In each hand she held short, stubby chunks of gray metal, probably high-powered Tasers. If they weren’t Tasers, it’d be best to take them on the inhibitor vest for maximum protection.

Evil’s TA advised him that this was a losing fight. Whoever she was, she was quick and technical. She had perfect form and wasted zero energy as she ran at him.

An angry grunt came from behind him.

The woman in front of him jumped to the wall to spring high.

Giving up speed, Evil dodged low in the same direction.

The twisted, green bin whiffed by. It smashed into one of the SWAT vehicles, knocking it back a few feet. Evil eyed the small opening. Just enough space for him to slip out. He just had to get past the woman in front of him.

They ran toward each other.

Another grunt lit the air.

The woman stopped short, pivoted, and leapt left.

Not as nimble, Evil dove the same way.

Another garbage bin whistled past to crash at the mouth of the alley.

Evil popped up to his feet.

The woman slapped a chunk of metal onto his chest, knocking him backward.

His forcefield flashed brilliantly and faded.

Evil rolled back over his shoulder and got on his feet.

She had already launched herself at him and punched her other chuck of metal onto the first.

Knocked from his feet again, a vibrating warmth filled Evil’s body and the world flashed a familiar gray.

A bright, gunmetal gray.

A teleportation gray.

A goodnight gray.

The Dream Is Over

Evil’s mouth felt, and tasted, like he’d bit into a warm, soft pretzel. Heck, he could even smell it. God he loved that taste. It tasted like freedom and fun.

Administrative Leave

Tamiko

Can’t win for losing. Trying to exhale her woes away, Tamiko Miller sighed.

With the sun almost gone down in Miami, the roar of a souped-up, wide-open throttle wasn’t unusual for humid summer nights. The squealing tires caught Tamiko’s ear. Telepathic, she’d been standing at the outside cocina bar of a Cuban-style cafe enjoying the surface thoughts of the cute young couple a few stools down. The long screech stole her attention.

A white Chevy van with deeply tinted windows power-slid sideways between crossing traffic, from Douglas Road onto Flagler Street.

There must be an ultrahuman inside using their powers to make that happen because the physics were way off.

A high-profile vehicle of that size trying to drift like a street racer should’ve rolled out of control and crashed into the Chevron gas station on the corner. Counter to how it should, the van’s body leaned like a race car over the inner two tires as all four gripped the road to complete the turn.

The text from Power League dispatch relaying Miami Police Department’s request for aid still showed on Tamiko’s League-issued eyeglasses. It had popped up three minutes ago and Tamiko had mentally prepared herself against going into action.

One of the cafe’s cooks, with copious black hair in his hairnet, leaned out over the bar to look down Flagler.

The cute couple took their attention off each other long enough to also check out the sound.

When the text came in, Tamiko had told herself that she’d stay standing under the fans at the street kitchen’s bar. The skin-mimic of her Power League uniform made it look like she was just another African American in a yellow, flower-print sundress. She’d just keep on enjoying the punchy Latin music that made her body rock, the aromatic grill frying plantains, and her overly sweet virgin strawberry margarita.

Heck, she was on her forth paid administrative leave for going into action without wearing the Power League’s new black titanium mesh uniform. And if the League Oversight Committee wanted to play that game, they’d have to specifically call her into action.

But—crap—she’d seen the wonky physics, and the van was zooming down the block in her direction.

Most of the newer Power Leaguers could see a call to action and do nothing until LOC activated them. As much as Tamiko wanted to do nothing, her conscience would devour her if she could’ve done something and people died because she didn’t.

Tamiko focused her telepathy and sent a mental pulse at the van.

Like spotting and touching bobbing apples in cold water, they were mapped. Five mental signatures lit inside the dark-windowed van: one in the driver seat, one in the passenger seat, two in the back and—she frowned at the oddity—one in the engine compartment?

They have a hostage?

While old Volkswagen Bugs and some Teslas had their trunk in the front, she hadn’t heard of that design being done with any vans. Then again, with powers, the entire van could just be a shell with the ultrahuman making it operate like a fully functional race car.

Noting the fifth signature for later, Tamiko locked on to the driver. She sent a command to hit the brakes.

Cutting to get to the front of traffic and still revving, the van kept gaining speed.

Either the driver was a strong ultra with mental powers or was being shielded by one because her direct command didn’t stick.

Trying to be slick, Tamiko sent an indirect command. One that switched the locations of the gas and brake pedals in the driver’s mind.

The van motored closer with no signs of stopping.

She switched targets to the passenger. She sent a command to brake.

Nothing.

Crap.

So much for keeping this one off the books. Time to get physical.

She kicked out of her heels and ran to stand over a manhole cover in the center of the street.

The van kept coming. Right at her. They planned to run her down.

Good.

Tamiko pulled her glasses off and tucked them into her purse where she grabbed her white mask. She pulled it over her head. The text for assistance showed on her lens. The mask sealed to her suit. The seal instantly disengaged the suit’s flesh-mimic of her dark skin, revealing her all white, full-body uniform under the sundress.

Fifty years ago, new Power League recruits with their multi-colored designs had called the simplicity of her uniform classic and called her Mother. Within the last twenty years, classic had become vintage, and Mother had become a respectful Gramma.

The seal also sent out a signal to Power League dispatch sending them her geolocation and letting them know that she was on standby.

They didn’t activate her.

Figures.

White smoke kicked up from the squealing tires as the van’s brake engaged. They were going to avoid her by cutting into a bank’s side parking lot.

Using her plasticity to make her body malleable, Tamiko thinned her feet to slip them into the seams of the manhole to anchor herself to the street. She then elongated her arms to reach out and stretch them the fifty feet under the van. Her hands latched on to the front axle. She snaked her fingers along the shaft to the steering system. Locking the wheels forward, she used her plasticity to make her fingers as durable as steel.

The wheels tried to turn, but her toughened fingers kept that from happening.

The engine roared. The driver had jumped back on the gas to mow her down.

Good.

Tamiko squished her body flat to the street like thinned bubblegum, covered in her Kevlar uniform and sundress.

The van rolled over her.

As it did, she switched her grip to the rear axle. She used her plasticity to turn her body into high tensile rubber to stop the van.

The van’s momentum almost yanked her from the ground.

Almost.

While her strength was slightly elevated from a human’s, she was nowhere near strong enough to stop a speeding van. However, her powers enabled her to do many amazing tasks that others with the same physical power would never try—until they saw her do it.

Pulled to a stop, pillows of white clouds bloomed from the rear tires as the stink of the van burning rubber filled the street. Like performing a burnout, the rear swerved in place for the driver to pop the clutch. But Tamiko had a solid hold of it, and it wasn’t going anywhere.

Because of the smoke, the van was hard to see.

Doors squeaked open. Three of the mental signatures dashed from the van toward the front steps of the two-story First Nation’s Reserve Bank.

Clad in black, full-body SWAT-like uniforms that were modified to look like the Power League’s new titanium mesh uniforms, the three signatures—two female, one male—came out of the smoke with assault rifles pointed her direction.

The women pointed their guns at the bank as they went in. The male kept his pointed at Tamiko as he followed them.

They moved like a tightly knit military unit on a mission.

With her power fully engaged, Tamiko held on to the axle with her left hand while she made her right arm malleable to snake it into one of the van doors the three had left open.

She felt her way to the front seat, up the back, and down to the driver’s back.

The driver rocked to the left to hop out.

Tamiko’s fingers wrapped around his chest and held the man in place.

The tires kept squealing. He hadn’t let off of the gas.

She ballooned and snaked the back of her hand up the man’s back, around the sides of his head, and covered his mouth and nose.

His fingers gripped into her Silly Putty-like density before she tightened her hand to steel, trapping them.

Bound to the driver’s seat and unable to get free, the man bucked. The revving engine stopped and started as the man’s frantic kicks occasionally hit the gas as Tamiko suffocated him.

Eventually, he went limp as his mental signature weakened to someone who’s unconscious.

Tamiko released his nose and mouth and loosed her fingers to feel his chest expanding as he took heavy, slumbering breaths.

Van stopped and driver unconscious, Tamiko released the van and snapped her body back to the shapely figure she’d had in her late twenties. It wasn’t vanity. She had mostly relied on her telepathy until that point and then really started to stretch the limits of her plasticity; and, as such, that was the form her body naturally reverted to.

Slipping out of the sundress, Tamiko sent a mental pulse at the bank.

The women were rounding up hostages—fourteen of them—while the man kept his gun trained at the door.

Hoping the driver was the mentalist, Tamiko sent a mental bolt at the three of them to knock them out.

They slowed for a moment but kept in action.

Crap.

So much for keeping this off of the official records.

While her mask sealing had flagged her to dispatch, Tamiko rubbed her hands together to switch from standby to active.

With her microphones and bodycams activated, Tamiko gave a brief recap. “Pearl on scene. Van stopped at my geo. One perp unconscious in driver seat. Three armed perps in First Nation’s gathering hostages.” Recalling the physics and their telepathic resistance, she added, “Multiple indicators of ultrahuman activity.” Gritting her teeth, she asked, “Preferred course of action?”

She hated handing off the decision-making to the LOC tactical room, but rules were rules.

Samantha Kaminski, the main pain in Tamiko’s butt—the oversight jerk who championed the SWAT-like uniforms—replied, “If you’re in tac-black, proceed at best discretion.”

Tamiko asked, “If not?”

Samantha said, “Change. Then same directions.”

Cars started honking at her.

Tamiko spun and sent out a telepathic broadcast to those in the car. This just happened. She then replayed the gunmen running from the van to the bank.

She broadcasted, Official League business. Detour.

Unlike other cities, the Miami drivers made visible gestures to show how unhappy they were about it. However, while doing so, they were diverting downside streets and parking lots.

Tamiko had turned back to the bank.

A guy yelled, “I’m running late.”

Why was there almost always one guy who thought his time was more important than other’s lives?

Tamiko didn’t turn around. She locked on to his mental signature and pushed happy compliance at him.

The same guy yelled, “And I’m happy to comply.”

Focusing on containing it to a quarter mile, Tamiko radiated her usual wave of avoidance command. Since she had a sub-wave to those who identified as first responders, allowing them to ignore the command, emergency crews loved when she sent out the wave. It always cut down on looky-loos and innocent bystanders.

Tamiko pulsed the bank again.

The two women each had taken a group of six hostages to far ends of the bank. The man was toward the back of the bank with the two remaining hostages.

Tamiko said, “My tac-blacks are a good two minutes away.”

With a barely veiled nasty tone, Samantha said, “Then what are you doing in action, Pearl?” She sounded like she spat the words. “You shouldn’t even be on standby.”

Tamiko did her best to keep her tone civil but building resentment laced her reply with sarcasm. “Shall I disengage for four minutes and give a sitrep when I get back?”

The radio silence was delicious.

Focusing again on a quarter mile, Tamiko sent out a pulse. In general, mental signatures were moving away from her location. There were some in nearby buildings who continued on with their lives but were doing so away from the windows that were facing the bank.

There were a couple of mental signatures in the parking lot behind the bank. They were going back to their cars. There was a light signature—sleeping—in the tall, well-manicured, dark green Japanese privet shrubs that lined the side of the bank. She considered rousing the sleeper to get them moving away.

Jeff Hank’s voice, a voice Tamiko knew well and admired, said, “Pearl.”

Respectfully, Tamiko asked, “Yes, sir?”

“Go get ’em.”

Smiling, Tamiko nodded, “Yes, sir.”

It’s a Trap

Concerned about the people in the apartments across Flagler from First Nation’s Reserve Bank, Tamiko’s feet pounded the concrete as she hustled down the bush-lined sidewalk of the small side street that branched off of Flagler.

She glanced at the Bank of America across the street from First Nation’s Reserve Bank. Bankers were giving soft directional whistles as patrons were pouring out the emergency exit door next to the drive-thru, getting in their cars, and leaving.

It was good to see.

While she could toughen her body to be bulletproof, she still worried about the bullets that would miss her. Good to know BOA was emptying out.

From the militaristic way the three of them moved, wild missing probably wouldn’t be as much a factor as with other yahoos with full autos.

But.

Errant bullets were still likely and it’d be best if they went into the brick walls sectioning off the bank’s parking or abandoned cars.

A powerful smell—wedding cake—washed into her nose. She stopped cold as deep shame welled up within. Her gaze dropped to the concrete under her feet. She could feel her sister’s piercing gaze lock on to her.

Sister? Tamiko didn’t have a sister.

Someone was using a power on her.

About to break free of the emotional manipulation, she spied a small slice of red velvet cake with white frosting on a superfancy, pink-veined china saucer at the end of the bushes. It was just like the servings of her sister’s wedding cake.

Tamiko latched on to the fact that she did not…have…a…sister.

It didn’t help.

The visual and invasive smell of the scrumptious cake pulled her mind from Miami and plunged her into the cool ocean air of a lush beachside courtyard at a top tier Maui resort. The aromatic, cream-colored rose floral arrangements around the three-layered white frosting cake were off the chain.

Not…real…

Tamiko worked to recover her real senses.

But her sister knew. Yup, her sister knew what she had just done. Her sister knew that she and her soon-to-be brother-in-law had just had a quickie in one of the resort’s bathrooms. Her sister’s expression said it all, and the tenuous bond of sisterhood they had rekindled over the past four years had been broken.

Angry tears dropped from her sister’s eyes as she rushed over to her. Tamiko felt like running, but shame had frozen her. She had to face the music.

Her sister pointed at her and screamed.

A voice synthesizer said, “The bank is a trap, Pearl!”

What? Tamiko frowned.

Her sister’s mouth was moving in a muted venomous and wrath-filled rant. Then the words were gone.

The synthesized voice said, “The bank is a trap. I was about to make a deposit when I sensed danger and ducked into the bushes. A team of black-clad soldiers appeared and rushed into the back a few minutes ago. Most of them have powers, Pearl. The bank is a trap.”

Her sister shoved her hard, gave her tears an angry swipe, and stormed off.

The Maui resort wedding faded away.

The reality of the warm Miami evening came back to Tamiko. She was on a side street off of Flagler. Next to bushes that lined First Nation’s Reserve Bank. The cake smell was gone. Only the weak perfume of the Japanese privet remained. The directional whistles of the BOA employees came to a stop as the bankers hopped into the last cars in the parking lot over there to take off.

Instantly, Tamiko locked on to the mental signature in the bushes. She sent a mental command that would lock up all of their main muscles like a seizure.

Furious, the fact that she was being warned about a possible trap helped Tamiko keep the heat out of her voice. “Using powers on a uniformed Power Leaguer is a capital offense.” She sent a command to give control of jaw.

The synthesized voice had a slight—easily faked—feminine tone. “I’m sorry. Please. I was only trying to help.”

While Tamiko normally asked for permission, she figured fair was fair and reached into the mental signature’s recent memories.

As though Tamiko were witnessing the woman’s sensations firsthand, Tamiko watched from under the bushes as ten soldiers—dressed just like the ones from the van—teleported to just outside the back.

Though in the woman’s memory, Tamiko felt her jaw loosen and mouth gap. Eight of them looked exactly like the death squad that was teleported to Congress a few years back.

All five of the Congressional Power League guards, mostly retired from active duty Leaguers—very old friends of hers—managed to put down two of the death squad before being murdered along with most of the congressional floor.

The ten stood where they had appeared for a moment.

A want for vengeance took ahold of Tamiko. A want that was only tamped by her having watched video of—what the news labeled the Congressional Attack—multiple times. They were powerful and ruthless.

One of the smaller ones nodded.

They all rushed into the bank.

While Tamiko didn’t have the ability to sense danger, this person did. And, through the memory, she could feel danger radiating from the soldiers. Two of them were dangerous because of the assault weapons in their hands. The other eight managed to emanate a greater threat than the guns they held. One of them, the hulking one that was first into the back of the bank, was the most dangerous being the person in the bushes had ever felt.

There had been times early in Tamiko’s hero career when people tried to warn her and she hadn’t listened. She had both the emotional and physical scars to prove it; not to mention the marks left on history.

While the unknown woman’s method of relaying the warning was a capital crime, this tip from the unknown person in the bushes was more credible than any tip she had ever received.

Pearl turned from looking at the bushes to the First Nation’s Reserve parking lot.

Her suit’s lenses relayed what she was seeing to Power League dispatch and she didn’t want them to see this anonymous helper. While using powers on a Power Leaguer was a capital offense, whoever set this up had superhuman scheming. And, whoever that was, they would not be happy with their well-laid plan falling through because of a good Samaritan.

Expressing her heartfelt gratitude, Tamiko sent an emotionally laced thank you to the mental signature that had tipped her off. Ending the seizer command, she added, I suggest you stay hidden until you feel it’s safe enough to scram.

The voice, “Thank you, Pearl. Oh, thank you.”

Jeff asked, “Something up, Pearl?” He hadn’t heard the woman’s voice?

There were a handful of ultrahumans who didn’t show up on electronics. Given the woman’s synthesized voice, she might’ve been one of them. An otherwise electric ghost in a system based on the five primary senses.

The parking lot behind First Nation’s was three faded double lanes on cracked, old asphalt. Each lane could hold about twenty cars each. She glanced at the two patrons who had gotten into the cars and were driving out of the parking lot leaving nine cars in the lot. Unlike Bank of America, First Nation’s Reserve didn’t have a drive thru. The building was obviously originally designed to be a doctor’s office or jewelry shop, with secluded parking away from the main street.

For now, Tamiko lied, “No. Just making sure the area is clear.” She’d tell Jeff the truth later during the off-the-record portion of the incident recap.

Jeff said, “I tried pulling up the cameras in the bank, but First Nation’s system is offline. The only three shots I have are from the two Bank of America ATMs and lobby cam.”

Tamiko asked, “Can you see First Nation’s parking lot?”

“Yeah.” Jeff said, “With one of the ATM cams.”

Leaning her head low to the ground, Tamiko tried to make it seem like she was searching the parking lot.

She said, “Jeff, roll back the camera. See if they came straight through.”

Jeff said, “On it.”

Great. Now she just had to stall long enough for him to see the group of soldiers.

The two cars came out of the parking lot.

Tamiko dropped into a low push-up position to be able to see under both cars as they drove away. One went up and left on Flagler. The other went down toward the neighborhoods farther down the side street.

Feeling like she milked that for all the time it was reasonably worth, Tamiko got back to her feet. The rear entrance was framed double doors with that mirrored privacy glass to keep prying eyes from seeing what was going on inside.

Jaw clenched, Tamiko’s guts tightened as she eased along the building. Knowing what she was moving toward, she felt like she was moving too slowly.

Having been in the Power League for decades, going toward trouble was a reoccurring theme in her training speech to new recruits. She was doing her job, something she’d done hundreds of times before. She hadn’t been this nervous in a long time.

While she was glad the good Samaritan had warned her, she sort of wished she hadn’t felt the danger each soldier radiated. Then things would be natural instead of her trying to act natural.

Samantha spoke into her headset. “Pearl, you keep scanning the parking lot. What’s up?”

That almost sounded like real care.

Tamiko nodded. She whispered, “I sensed three mental signatures around the building, but only two cars left and there was only one person in each car.” While misleading, that was technically the truth. She’d explain to Jeff later. “I don’t want to rush through the rear entrance only to be taken from behind.”

Samantha said, “Okay. Well you—Holy shit!” There were a couple of gasps in Samantha’s background.

Tamiko crouched, scanned the lot, and asked, “What?”

Jeff said, “Pearl. Drop back a block and wait for backup.”

Glad to get the order, Tamiko was about to do exactly that when she held her ground. It’s what she would’ve done if she didn’t know what was inside.

Tamiko said, “I got this. Just talk to me.”

Jeff said, “No, Pearl.” There was a small commotion growing in his background. “You drop back a block and you do it right now.”

While he was talking, Tamiko could hear Samantha in the background. “This is an alpha one, folks. All hands-on deck. Ring the bells. Mike, call—”

They obviously got to the part of the video where the soldiers teleported into the parking lot. And recognized them as the congressional death squad.

Tamiko backed away. “Should I post up on BOA to keep eyes on First Nation’s?”

“Negative.” Jeff’s tone was flat. His pure business demeanor. “We already have drones en route for eyes on. Drop back to Douglas or Le June.”

Tamiko nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Samantha said, “We estimate team readiness in five minutes.”

Tamiko said, “Copy.” She began to back away.

Jeff said, “You’ll be taking lead, Pearl. Do your best to get them talking.”

Tamiko nodded. Jeff had finally gotten the green light for enabling the voice recognition on the uniforms. If she could get them talking, the computer at Oversight could start comparing the voice against known voices cataloged in the system; and Jeff—with his big-picture thinking—had entered all the voices from all Power League archives. If any of voices were known villains from the past, her visor would give an aqua indicator with names, nicknames, and past offenses.

Only a few key employees knew about the new VR tech, and the mini microphones on her suit were the first field iterations. If the warning didn’t only flag on Jeff’s computer, Tamiko would’ve loved to be a fly on the wall in dispatch to see folks’ reactions when the system lit on a familiar voice.

Samantha said, “Might as well get your tac-blacks.”

Jeff said, “Agreed. Do it, Pearl.”

Tamiko sighed. “Yes, sir.”

Her legs thinned as she elongated them to be three stories tall. This would make it so she could step up onto buildings like going up a stair step and stride through residential neighborhoods without trespassing into backyards.

The hotel she was staying at was a few blocks up on Le June. Instead of going down Flagler to the intersection, Tamiko crossed Flagler in one long stride and then the apartments across from the bank in the next.

When she had been placed on her second administrative leave for refusing to wear the new tac-black uniform, Tamiko had thought about retiring so that she wouldn’t have to ever wear the uniform. While the uniqueness of each Leaguer’s old uniform gave a sense of character and hope, these new ones felt more like the-gestapo-get-you-while-you-sleep.

Plus, her current uniform expanded with her. The new one had Velcro break points that would expose her skin if she stretched more than a foot. And while girls nowadays might go to the grocery store in their two-piece bikinis, Tamiko was more modest than Annette Funicello.

Used to running through suburbs, Tamiko was surprised by how many trees and pools there were in Miami. And a lot of screened-in patios.

When Tamiko got to the hotel’s two-story parking structure, she sent out a two-block pulse to see if she was on anyone’s surface thoughts.

Eight people.

She sent out a command pulse for them to check the news to see if she was on any of the news stations. Of course, she wouldn’t be. Not yet, at least.

The Las Vegas Times Act guaranteed no media coverage would be allowed until approved by the League Oversight Committee. Nearly thirty hostages had been killed because of how the Las Vegas streaming news service handled their exclusive coverage. Among the dead were several prominent Chinese dignitaries.

Tamiko used her plasticity to modify her facial features. She didn’t want to change in the parking lot, but if she wanted to get back to taking out the death squad—which she did, desperately—every second mattered.

No more being distracted by administrative leave.

No more Oversight and tac-black woes.

Full focus on here and now.

She slipped out of her bottoms. “Ouch!”

Jeff asked, “What?”

Sharp, stabbing pain jabbed into her left inner thigh.

A thick silver shaft—some sort of dart—was flush against Tamiko’s skin. In an instant, her vision began to blur. She pulled the blood-slicked tranquilizing needle out.

Growing black dots swam in her blurred vision. This wasn’t like anything she’d ever heard of.

Tamiko slurred, “I’m shhot. Shedative.” Reflexively, she toughened her body as much as she could. The parking lot spun and wavered as she turned the direction she thought the shot came from. “Need to—”

She went unconscious.

Captured

Hands cuffed behind her back by chilly, inch-wide bands, Tamiko lay on her side semi-fetal. The ground felt like a threadbare flannel blanket on metal and was surprisingly warm.

Groggy, she peeked.

Under the faded green-gray flannel blanket was black metal floor. Inch-thick steel bars in a four-inch grid came up from the metal, and a grimy, yellowed-white plaster wall was a few feet away.

She closed her eyes again.

For some reason, this didn’t feel linked to the incident at First Nation’s Reserve Bank. The death squad didn’t take prisoners. This had to be something else. She tried to turn her hands to stumps so she could pull them free of the cuffs, but her body didn’t comply.

Nullifiers.

Tamiko reminded herself that she’d been in tighter spots.

Back in the day, her hero squad had been captured during a covert extraction mission in what used to be Baja California. Of course, the US government and the Power League had denied involvement, stating Tamiko’s ultrahuman team had gone rogue.

But, even though Supreme—himself—had led their capture, her team had all kept their wits about them and had gotten out. In reality, instead of killing all of them, Supreme had confided in Pearl—leader of the squad—that he was going to orchestrate them escaping with the ten children they’d been sent in to save so long as she reported that the kids were rescued, not released. He had a reputation to maintain and Tamiko had kept that secret.

A bitter, alcoholicy pineapple taste clung to Tamiko’s mouth. Her light-headedness coupled with the taste reminded her of when she’d gotten beyond snookered during her brother’s Las Vegas wedding. The hangover the next day felt like, tasted like, this. Nasty.

The memory. The sensation. Her stomach heaved.

She managed to keep her constitution.

“Oh.” A man’s voice. High-pitched. Nasally. “Sounds like Granny Panties is awake.”

As she wondered how he knew what kind of underwear she wore, a soft electric feeling—like static ready to pop—vibrated on her skin. All her skin. All over her body. They’d completely stripped her suit off her. She only had her bra and panties.

How embarrassing.

Having blown her chance at pretending to be unconscious, Tamiko focused her mind to not mention anything about the gunmen. If they wanted information from her, they’d have to prompt her. And in their prompting, she’d learn more from them than they would from her.

She opened her eyes again.

The black metal floor had small divots and scratches. Grouped by five, there were thirty tic marks on the wall. She sat up and thunked her head on the grid above her. They had her in a three-foot cube that resembled a dog crate.

Scrunching down slightly, she scanned the room.

There were four other cages like hers spaced three feet away from one another. The furthest two were empty, the one in the center had a young Asian woman, and the one on the other side of her had an older black man.

The woman was full fetal and in a black thong and a bra that probably did nothing for support. The man was sitting cross-legged in tan boxers with winking red happy faces.

Not ogling, the man was sizing her up. His gaze noted her muscled arms, shoulders, and legs. Then, a calculating gleam took ahold of his eyes when his focus went to the series of crossbars above her. It’d probably blow his mind to find out that she was really close to his age. Her svelte, ever-fit and youthful body was a perk of her ultrahuman powers.

The room was thirty by thirty with gray cement floors. All the walls were the grimy plaster. Stairs in the northeast corner lead up to a handleless riveted steel door.

Next to the stairs, two guards dressed in black fatigues with black pantyhose over their heads sat fully reclined in cushy knockoff La-Z-Boys. A black mini fridge was between them with a gaming console on top. Both held controllers, but the one on the right, closer to the stairs, was using his and looking above the cages along the south wall.

The entire room had the cramped, moist—probably mildew—feel of being in a poorly maintained man cave.

Tamiko’s light-headedness started to fade; so did the pineapple taste. A funk like Cheetos and musty socks took over.

Both guards were thin, but the one on the left was skinny. He was the nasally man. “Ya know, Sugar-tits, you could be a model if you wore somethin’ more like Aly Raisman instead of them big-ass, Betty White, Golden Girls bloomers.”

“Bloomers?” The other guard, the one playing, laughed a dim-witted raucous sound and fist-bumped the jokester, who snickered. “Oh, snap!”

Tamiko wasn’t going to dignify that with a response. She thought they were men, but they were seeming more like man-children. In case one of them was also a mentalist, Tamiko went to slyly reach in their minds with her telepathy, but the nullifiers made her main power untappable. She could feel its presence, but it was just beyond her grasp.

To prompt conversation without giving anything away, Tamiko asked, “Where am I?”

The nasally guard said, “Here. Waiting.”

The dimwit guard squeezed his controller angrily and dropped it in his lap. “You’re up.”

“Died there again?” Nasally picked up his controller. “Watch and learn.”

Tamiko looked at the dull one. “Where are we?”

His gaze was fixed above the cages. “You heard the man, Bloomers.” They both laughed. “Just wait and see.”

Hell with that. Tamiko leaned toward the caged man. She whispered, “Know where we are?”

The man shook his head and looked at the guards.

Dimwit said, “Go ahead, ODB. Give her the scoop. I won’t shock you for it.”

The man’s gaze went to Nasally.

Nasally glanced down and then back up. “ODB learns fast.” He then twisted his game controller and tapped the buttons. “I won’t shock you either.”

The man turned his gaze to Tamiko’s eyes and his focus didn’t waver. The man began, “Well.”

Tamiko knew that smooth, bell-tone tenor voice from her past somewhere. She made sure not to let her face show the spark of recognition. As he spoke, Tamiko worked to place it.

The man continued, “We are in the basement of Purgers.”

She’d never heard of the group, but even the cadence of his speech was familiar. She wanted to say that he was a DJ from the 60s or one of the old commercial voice-over guys when advertising used to be full of perfect voices. However, a deep-seated loathing within her was triggered by his voice.

Could he be the old villain Hologram? In addition to using his illusions, the villain had always had his head and body fully covered. Still, she had always pegged him for a brother and this guy was old enough. But Hologram was supposedly dead.

Tamiko felt her eyes narrowing. Her intuition told her that he was, indeed, Hologram.

He continued, “And soon, they are going to take our powers.”

Tamiko thought back to all the times Hologram had escaped her and the rest of the Power League.

When Hologram did his first heist, he had fooled everyone into thinking he was a superstrong powerhouse because—when confronted exiting the jewelry store—he threw a city bus.

The horror of that massive bus hurtling through the air, filled with passengers. The terrible sound it made when it crashed into Woolworth’s on 7th and Vine. The stench of gasoline and burning rubber. The trapped, screaming passengers pleading for help. Back then, public safety was top priority so the team went to save lives, only for the entire scene to dissipate minutes later. The warm blood she had felt on her hands, seeping through her suit, had been nothing more than Hologram’s very real illusions.

That was back in the early 1960s and the fake horrors of the League’s first encounter with Hologram still occasionally popped up in Tamiko’s nightmares.

Just thinking about it made the burnt rubber smell linger with her for a moment before the invasive room funk stamped it. Between that, the clicking controllers, and the creaking recliners, Tamiko was pulled from her memory. She had to take in the nasty plaster walls and focus on her cage bars for a moment to anchor herself.

The decades showed on the man with the white hair and deep creases at the corners of his eyes. His illegally enriched life must have been filled with laughter because his resting face looked casually happy. She wanted to belt him one right across his wicked kisser.

Hologram said, “Amos and Andy there seem to think that robbing us of our powers is what fuels their tech.”

Nasally wrenched his controller sideways and leaned as he said, “’Cause it does.”

Hologram said, “My hypothesis is that we are down in the Primazone and these two unwittingly work for Supreme.”

Tamiko frowned. These guys couldn’t work for Supreme because—thanks to Supreme’s great-grandson—the Power League secretly had Supreme in custody in one of the black-site prisons that Oversight collectively referred to as Nowhere.

But, she figured, it was possible that Supreme’s followers were still keeping up their ruse of their country running just fine without their all-powerful ultrahuman dictator.

Hologram said, “Can you imagine anyone, human or ultrahuman, who’d destroy the power wisps instead of absorbing them?”

The combination of his voice, calm face, and cool demeanor was rather disarming. Tamiko found that her reflexive frown had eased, but she frowned again. “Power wisps?”

Hologram said, “The lights that come up from a dead ultra.”

Since it was widely speculated by the greatest minds on earth that the powers that manifested on earth came from a fifth dimensional being, the League’s term for the wisps were fifths. Usually the fifths, especially if there were more than one, would rocket away, sometimes in the same direction, sometimes not. Figuring that the fifths were going home, Tamiko hadn’t known anyone to try and stop them, much less absorb or destroy them.

The question sounded rhetorical. Tamiko relaxed her face and didn’t say anything.

Hologram said, “These guys—”

The riveted steel door at the top of the stairs creaked open.

The two guards tossed their controllers down and got to their feet. Standing, foot-long stun batons dangled from their hips. The black batons appeared to be standard law enforcement style, but had a thin brass netting from the knobby hilt to the tip.

A tall man with a thick, soldier build came down the stairs. He was dressed in the same black fatigues as the guards, but he had a proper ski mask on and an AK-47 resting in his hands. There was a cocky swagger in his movement.

“Harvesting time.” The gunman’s voice was bland and rather pedestrian. Given enough time, she’d be able to identify it later, but would have to hear more of his cadence to be sure.

Nasally clapped his hands and rubbed them together in a greedy fashion. “This one goes into my baton, right, boss?”

Gunman answered, “Indeed.”

Dimwit said, “When are we going to harvest ODB? My baton’s running low.”

Gunman stopped at the bottom of the stairs to regard Hologram. “While we’ve been holding off to hear from the big boss, we’ve received a second diffuser. So, I think we’ll have a twofer today.”

The two guards snuck a fist bump.

Angling the AK down, Gunman motioned his head at Tamiko and turned to the guards. “I wasn’t on property when the new one was brought in. What’s her deal?”

Surprised, the two guards glanced at each other. Nasally said, “You haven’t heard?

Gunman shrugged. “Just said that I was away.”

Dimwit said, “Go ahead, tell him about Ranch and her Golden Girl bloomers.”

Gunman asked, “You mean Blanche?”

Tamiko eyed Gunman. He seemed to be about the same age as the man-children, and Betty White—much less her Golden Girls’ character name—was the only name that people his age may know. Then again, the show might be back in syndication. It would’ve been better if they had called her Wheezie; there was dignity in that.

Dimwit said, “Whatever.” He pointed at her panties. “Take a look at the massive things.”

Gunman didn’t. He turned to Nasally and asked, “You were saying?”

“Yeah.” Nasally gave Dimwit a dirty look. He pointed at her face, not her underwear. “That’s Pearl.”

“Pearl?” Hologram and the gunman had said her hero handle in shocked unison.

Both looked at her, stunned.

Nasally said, “I know. I thought she’d be old as fuck, too. But she was wearing Pearl’s PL suit and doing PL stuff with the same power array as Pearl.”

Dimwit said, “She must’ve gotten the granny panties when she got the powers.”

Behind Gunman, Nasally gave Dimwit a neck-chopping knock-it-off sign.

Dimwit silently lipped, “Oh,” and nodded.

“How—” Gunman was stunned. “But she’s—” Gunman faced the guards. “How’d you catch a telepath?”

Tamiko closed her eyes. How embarrassing.

Fate & Anger

Bert

Bert Gresham couldn’t help but gawk at the youthful Pearl.

If this young sister had the real Pearl’s powers and uniform, then the original Pearl—the one he’d quip with during their occasional battles—was dead.

The realization was crushing and pained his heart.

Bert had often fantasized about accidently running into the original Pearl—Mother Pearl—outside of her uniform somewhere, like a grocery store. Or maybe a chance encounter when he’d open a door for her and they’d hit it off. They’d have a meal, get serious through the course of a year or two, and she’d confide in him her superhero identity.

While that part of the fantasy was crystal clear, the rest—the part where he’d admit his past crimes as Hologram—was always shaky. He’d want her to know why he’d done those few robberies. If he just came out and said it, she’d probably beat him down and turn him in. Still, he’d like to think she’d be understanding. And maybe she’d prompt him into joining the Power League. Typically, felons couldn’t join, but maybe there could’ve been a way for her—as a leader of the central arm of the Power League—to vouch for him.

The news of Mother Pearl’s death made the musty basement feel colder. Dimmer. Bert imagined the whole world must’ve felt that way, too.

Alfred ended his nasal yammering with, “She’d just dropped her pants in a parking garage and no one was around. So, we flicked on the scope and shot her with a tranq.”

Jim nodded his slow-witted nod. “No one was even around to ask why we were loading her up into the van.”

To express his own surprise, Bert had his hologram of the boss guard hold the AK-47 with one hand. He made sure to give the rattling ammo sound. “Huh…Just like that? No fight? No invisible mental waves or telepathic-induced nightmares? No city-block-away punches or kicks?”

While Bert didn’t have nightmares all that often anymore, when he did, the visions were usually ones implanted by Mother Pearl to make him freeze up in horror, like being chased by a lynch-hungry mob.

Bert had his holo glance back at the two before focusing on the youthful Pearl. “She’s able to do that stuff, ya know.”

Alfred said, “Yeah, I know. We saw her do some of that stretchy stuff at the bank, but, nope. With the max tranq, she went out like a total jabroni.”

Jim said, “Well, I have nightmares.”

Alfred slapped Jim’s shoulder. “We just got her, man. That’s not what he means.”

Jim said, “Oh. I know.” He gave Alfred the neck-chopping sign. “Was just being funny.”

Once Bert had recovered from the shock, the reality of having someone with Mother Pearl’s powers here with him registered. His plan to escape this nasty basement and crap island became a lock. While she looked like she could fight—boy, could the original Mother Pearl really fight—her telepathy would make this almost too easy. The trick would be to get her inhibitors turned off.

Speaking for himself, Bert said, “Guys. Let me do it.”

Bert had his holo ask, “Do what, old man?”

Bert said, “Her grandmother was my mortal enemy. I didn’t get a chance to end our beef in the past, but I can hope the old biddy is watching as I strangle the shit out of her descendant.”

Pearl sat up and gawked at him. “You rotten—”

Bert gave her a goading grin.

The original Mother Pearl often called him a rotten scoundrel in person and in press conferences. None of the others who had eluded the Power League was a rotten scoundrel; just him. His own special designation. The universe would be perfect if he could’ve heard the original Mother Pearl call him that just one more time.

He waited to see if this Pearl would finish and lecture him like Mother Pearl would, but no. This Pearl just glowered.

Alfred said, “That’s some twisted shit. I knew you were dirty, old bastard, but key-rist, that’s some next level shit.”

Jim said, “I wanna do it.” His jaw clenched in that pre-murder way that Jim had. “I don’t like the way she looks at me.”

Bert had his holo give an opinion about being allowed to choke Pearl. “Nah. Last time we let you out of that cage, old man, you came at us and almost got away.”

Bert said, “Look, I’m sorry for that. You know, desperation’s a real MF’er. Just let me kill her. Please. I won’t try anything.” He snapped his fingers like he had just thought of something. “I’m a criminal from the past. I’m not going to tell you who I was, but I’ve got offshore accounts with millions. You let me do it, I’ll give you the money.”

Still glaring at him, Pearl said, “You. Butt.”

It wasn’t scoundrel, but it had the trappings of a Mother Pearl clean-curse. Best of all, it had all of the flavor. This next generation Pearl—he had a hard time attributing any real experience to this young lady—must have known Mother Pearl real well. Either that or made serious study of the old films, interviews, and biographical graphic novels.

Like old times, Bert winked at her and blew a kiss.

Seething rage darkened her face.

Though caged feet away, Bert leaned back. He’d been on the receiving end of hate before, but that was back before civil rights. That hate was more general because he was black. The hate in Pearl’s eyes was pointed. Specific. She wanted to kill him and only him. No one else would do, and from the looks of it, no one could get in her way to keep it from happening.

Alfred snickered.

In Game: Time Stop

Though it had been two decades since high school, the cold steel stopwatch in Tyrone Moore’s palm reminded him of old Mr. Watson’s. That stopwatch had ruled every grueling P.E. period and dominated every fucking football practice.

In the days of digital clocks on the wall and other coaches using the timer on their phones, Mr. Watson’s always-shiny stopwatch had been a throwback to a time of old-ass rotary phones and actually wearing watches. Not as a fashion accessory, but because that was just what people did to make sure they were punctual when arriving wherever they needed to be.

Tyrone depressed the trigger.

Buzzing energy filled him and thrummed inside his being like his skin was nothing more than a roiling balloon full of angry bees. A delicious honeyed flavor filled his mouth.

Time stopped.

The buzzing continued.

And as long as he didn’t move too quickly, the buzzing would ease while time remained frozen for a full minute. At least, that’s what Ruthanne had explained to him when she rewarded him the magic timepiece for saving her granary.

Focus.

Tyrone’s head expanded slightly as though he was about to float away. He wrenched his thoughts from the memory. The last thing he needed right now was a cut scene that would eat up all of his time freeze.

The lush, deep green, 16-bit grass of the Eastern Plains expanded out to a perfect, pixel-thin horizon beneath the kind of uniformly light blue sky only possible—and acceptable—in a video game made for fucking children.

Tyrone had passed over the amber-striped, navy-blue brick border that marked where the far reaches of all unclaimed unbelievably fertile land available around Blue Town ended and the travel scene would jump him over to Yellow Town.

But the cut scene hadn’t happened.

He eased his chin toward his shoulder to look back at the two guards chasing him.

Both had the blue vest with the dinky yellow star on the chest denoting that they were what passed for the law. Well, that and the stunted brown bowling pin they used as clubs; the only difference between them was one had black hair while other was blond. The rest of their clothes were the shitty uniform white cotton shirt, blue cotton pants, and ridiculous blue cotton shoes that Tyrone and every non-special character in Blue Town wore.

They had closed on him slightly since they had started chasing and, without the travel scene, their inch-by-inch gain would eventually catch them up.

Tyrone spun.

The buzzing left his body.

The honey taste went away.

Time started again.

Tyrone signaled them to stop and said, “Hold on.”

Both guards kept coming, but slowed when they were at conversation distance. A white balloon with a red flashing exclamation point floated to the right of each of their heads.

Hoping to reset their conversation tree, Tyrone said, “Hello. How do I get to Yellow Town?”

A white text balloon with red text appeared when the black-haired guard spoke. “Stealing is wrong and against Blue Town law.”

A menu of replies appeared in Tyrone’s mind and then manifested in white thought bubbles. Two went out directly to the side of his head while the other two were stacked above them:

Since he didn’t have any money, Tyrone weighed B and C. B would have him without a backpack—which is detrimental in any quest-related game—and if C worked, it would put him on a path to being a lame-ass guard offered as a profession in this 16-bit world.

It occurred to Tyrone that he didn’t even consider D to type in his own answer. He’d done it before to minimal effect, but just the fact that he didn’t auto-select it felt very telling. That realization upon him, Tyrone began to wonder how in the hell he got into the game in the first place.

That subtle, head-filling expansion before a cut scene began to make him feel floaty.

...

Oh, fuck yes!

Tyrone locked his thoughts on how he—a grown man—had come to be stuck in this goddamn child’s game.

Though he’d probably come back to facing these two jerkoffs, he’d at least know the how and why. Hell, he might actually wake up to find that these past couple of days had been nothing more than a very elaborate, and way too long, dream.

If that were the case, he was going to swear off of video games forever. He’d done it before and had always gone back, but this time—this time he’d stick to it. And if it wasn’t a dream—

...

His consciousness began to lift and he went into his memories. Not just to any memory—to one that was only a month old.

A memory of him protecting a kid from three teen-aged bullies.

...

Cut Scene: Protecting a Kid

“Welcome back!” Raul Julia, the voice of Gomez Addams in the Addams Family pinball game, rang out above the casual din of other pinball machines and video games in the Game On arcade.

While Tyrone’s prior score had been high enough to earn him a replay, he thought he had hit the bottom high score this time too. Doing so would give him another credit, but he hadn’t been prompted to put in his initials. He held the button for the right flipper down to start the game status report.

Left-handed, he drove his plastic fork into the large Styrofoam tray of boneless buffalo wings that he had ordered from the bar. He could eat, maybe, two more before having to close it up and take the rest to the Thursday night Dungeons & Dragons game. He swirled the boneless wing in the small Styrofoam vat of extra buffalo sauce and leaned over to not make a mess. He quickly popped it into his mouth.

“Off by two hundred thousand.” Tyrone smiled to himself as he thought about the skilled shot that he missed last game. “Son of a bitch. So fucking close.”

As Tyrone chewed, he winked at his initials on the lowest high score that he had missed beating. He locked it in mind and started a new game. He eased the plunger back between the fifth and sixth fret. The overall goal was to—at least—best the lowest high score, but his focus this game was not to miss one skill shot.

He released the plunger and tossed his fork into the empty top half of the Styrofoam container. The pinball raced up the opening launch pad, slowed at the end, and dropped off into the skilled shot area.

Raul Julia awarded him two million points.

“Hey, knock it off!” A kid’s voice yelled well above the hum of the arcade.

Kids yelling in here wasn’t out of the ordinary. Tyrone estimated that it came from three or four rows behind him. Either on the retro lane with games like Dig Dug, Track & Field, and Galaga or the final row beyond that, which housed all of the one-shot high-luck claw-type games. You’d have better odds of winning at a carnival than playing those fucking legalized theft machines.

Tyrone’s ball came down the side and he flicked his right button to use the upper flipper. The ball went up and around the side ramp. It’d either come down on “Light Thing Flips” or “Two Bear Kicks.” Though the ball tended toward the bear kicks, the extra kicks weren’t worth the five million “Thing” would earn him.

“I mean it! Stop!” Sounded like the same kid.

Tyrone glanced down the line of pinball machines to the bar and the kitchen beyond. The door was closed. Three silhouettes were visible on the Game On logo-stickered glass. Clark the owner/cook, and Denise and Sarah, the waitresses, all herked and jerked as though laughing it up back there.

Clark had invited Tyrone back once to show off the amazing sound system Clark had installed to combat the general noise of the arcade or—more importantly—the fever-pitched roars during college or pro football games. It was impressive.

“Help! Help!”

Tyrone turned from his game. He rushed down the row and past the three Megacade cabinets Clark had as endcaps of each row.

He rounded the final corner.

Three old-enough-to-know-better bald, Caucasian teenagers in white t-shirts, red jeans, and red combat boots were working to strip a Japanese kid wearing all black, maybe in his early teens, of his black backpack. Tyrone didn’t want to color the situation by presuming the three were skinheads picking on a lone minority kid, but the thought did cross his mind.

Tyrone yelled, “Hey!”

All four stopped and looked at him.

Taking advantage of the moment, the kid wrenched free with his backpack and ran behind Tyrone.

Though Tyrone had started to indulge a little too much in boneless wings and ice cream in the last couple of years, he managed to mostly stay in shape. He hadn’t been to a dojo since he turned thirty and the very real possibility of being in a fight made his heart start to thump.

The three teens looked too much alike. As though they were identical triplets whose parents managed to still force them into dressing in matching outfits. While they weren’t built, they were thin and in decent shape.

The center one flexed his shoulders and back, popping his joints before balling his fist. “What you gonna do, man?”

Besides exuding confidence, the cadence of the teen’s voice sounded like it belonged to someone much older.

Tyrone answered, “Nothing that I don’t have to.” He kept his stance and expression neutral. Though he wouldn’t have done anything different, a ripple of regret at stepping into a situation that he didn’t fully understand fluttered through him. And it was quickly trounced by his will to do the right thing.

Keeping his attention on the teens, Tyrone spoke to the kid behind him. “If they try anything else, run to the kitchen.”

The two flanking the one in the center held their ground as the center one advanced.

Not balling his fists, Tyrone raised his hands to defend himself and the kid.

Floating Point of View: Protecting a Kid

Instead of fighting the guy—who he’d find out had a rock-hard jaw—from behind his eyes, Tyrone’s awareness popped out to be three feet above and behind his body.

There was a dent in middle/back of his afro. Was he going bald? Why hadn’t any of his friends told him?

From up here, the air had a static-y feel, smell, and taste. Also, from up here, the situation looked silly.

A—truth be told—somewhat dumpy black man in his early forties, wearing brown loafers, beige Dockers, and a powder-blue long-sleeved button-up shirt; a guy obviously fresh off of work from some local department store where he was a top salesperson and just unwinding at a local arcade when trouble arose. Now that man found himself squaring off with a teen closer to his prime than the man was away from his.

Light footfalls sped away from him as the teen’s steady pace brought him closer. The sound of the arcade fell away and his body’s breathing took the foreground.

The teen swung.

The dumpy man—Tyrone—slipped the punch and dashed in to smash his elbow into the teen’s jaw.

The teen spun away and stumbled back but didn’t fall.

“What the fuck?” Eyes wide, the dumpy man rubbed his elbow. Connecting with the teen’s jaw was like elbowing a car door.

In the dumpy man’s amateur MMA career, that shot had knocked out several competitors. In fact, it was when the dumpy man had found himself laid out from such a shot that he decided to give up on his dream to go pro and, instead, embraced the daily grind of salesmanship.

The teen recovered, rubbed his jaw, and said, “Thanks for helping us level up our defense.”

The dumpy man was flabbergasted.

All three teens move forward.

Arrows flashed at the far ends of Tyrone’s peripherals. A choice came upon him. He could stay and watch himself fight well, but ultimately lose—badly—or float to the left or right.

Having experienced the fury, momentary hope, and pain of losing that fight firsthand, Tyrone focused on the flashing left arrow.

His floating awareness turned.

His awareness zoomed in to being just behind the kid as he pushed into the kitchen. Though Tyrone would’ve welcomed the smell of the burger patties sizzling on the grill, that static-y sensation dominated the area.

“Help,” the kid cried. “Three skinheads are beating up a black guy out there.”

Clark paused the blaring video of Kyle Tosh cracking jokes at Carnegie Hall. Clark asked, “What?”

“Three skinheads.” The kid continued to point. “Beating up a black guy.”

Clark reached under the prep counter and came up with a fucking shotgun. “Call the cops.” Gun tucked under his arm, Clark dashed out of the kitchen.

Tyrone wanted to follow him, but his point of view was stuck with the kid.

Both Denise and Sarah pulled their cellphones, dialed, and fixated on the CCTV feed. In the upper left corner screen, the three guys stomped the shit out of Tyrone’s body as he tried to crawl away. In the lower right, Clark had the butt of the shotgun on his shoulder and the business end trained on the teens.

The kid went back out into the bar. He knelt to rummage through his backpack.

A shotgun blast rocked the air.

Tyrone adjusted his point of view around the kid and was barely able to see Clark as his eyes also went wide.

Clark racked the gun. Pulled the trigger.

Racked the gun. Pulled the trigger.

Racked the—

A hand came into view from the edge of Tyrone’s anchored point of view and pulled the shotgun from Clark’s hand.

Clark turned and ran.

A shotgun blast sent Clark sprawling forward in a bloody mess.

Screams came from the kitchen.

The kid pulled two things from his backpack that each looked like a miniature clothes iron. He stood and pointed one at the teen with the shotgun.

Holding the shotgun in one hand, the teen—the machine—froze. The left side of its face and chest had been blown open to show an array of metal parts and complex wiring.

What in the blue fuck?

Only along for the ride, Tyrone wanted to yell “watch out” at the kid when a teen hopped over the counter.

The kid pointed the second iron-thing at the teen in the air.

Though physics moved the teen forward, he stopped moving his limbs and crashed behind the bar.

Keeping an iron pointed at the two, the kid steadily backed up toward the kitchen. Every once in a while, his slowly shuffling feet would connect with his backpack, and he would kick it farther behind him.

From the floating point of view, Tyrone could see the top of the third teen’s bald head inching along on the other side of the bar, keeping pace with the kid.

Tyrone heard his own voice from way over where he had been beaten down. “One’s at the bar.” He didn’t remember saying that, but he must’ve because he just did before flopping face-first on the arcade floor.

The kid bent at the knees. He pointed the iron at the bar, freezing the last teen. The other iron had the other two teens covered.

The kid said, “Bring me a chair.”

Sarah, the more collected between her and Denise, did.

A weighted feeling started to pull Tyrone’s point of view down toward the kid.

...

The kid set the iron on the chair pointed at the teen. He then reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny disk about half the size of a penny.

The weight grew heavier.

...

The kid placed the tiny disc in his ear. “I have the red situation contained. There are two bystander casualties and two eyewitnesses—”

The scene at the arcade faded away.

...

In Game: Blue Town Center

Tyrone’s senses came back to him. He didn’t wake up in a hospital. While he was pissed at being referred to as a bystander, being next to a 16-bit blue statue shifted his attention.

Three-foot-tall, 16-bit yellow bubble letters with green outlines appeared, taking up most of his vision.

Welcome to

Flowerland!

Each l was a small, brown, clay flowerpot that had the perfect atypical daisy growing tall while the o’s were large, soil-filled, brown, clay flowerpots. A jaunty piping played an upbeat tune.

Not a-fucking-gain.

His point of view was from three feet above his head. He tried to force it down into his head, but the point of view refused to budge and stayed high.

The text disappeared and the music stopped.

The other time Tyrone had been reset, he’d regained awareness next to the blue statue of Bob, one of the four founders of Blue Town. The rotund man had his arm fully extended and in his hand was the magical flute that supposedly calmed anyone listening to it. Water gushed five feet southward from the end of the flute to crash into the confluence of three streams from the south, east, and west to make the water fountain feature at the center of Blue Town.

Carol, a tall drink of water with hair down to the middle of her back, shot back at Bob from a tiny, outstretched spade. Her shooter didn’t make logical sense twice over. First, the spade was too thin to be able to have water running through it and second, unlike Bob’s flute, nothing was supposed to come out of the tip of a spade.

Tyrone patted his blue cotton trouser pockets. Empty. Both of the stopwatch and of the two slices of bread that—

What was her name? He had known the name of the lady who’d given him his first and only quest. He even knew what the reward she gave for completing the quest was, but fuck if he could remember her goddamn name.

Like the reset before, a lot of the fine details of his past explorations were gone.

He tried to force the name to mind, but it was gone. Just like the rewards she had given him.

Damn it.

All around the fountain’s lip were many small, uniform cups made from a generic deep brown wood. Each could scoop about eight ounces of water.

More hoping that the water was a form of Blue Town generic booze, for the first time that he could remember, Tyrone took one of the many wooden cups. He dipped it into the fountain and brought the pale blue water to his nose. Why’d it smell like cinnamon?

He took a sip that kicked like vodka. Smooth. The water held the faintest taste of a churro. Almost like, instead of restaurants putting a lemon wedge on the rim of a glass, there was a chunk of the delicious fried dough.

Tyrone nodded his approval and gazed around Blue Town again. Just to see if anything happened to change.

Four paths, smooth tan tile made to look like it was cobblestone, led north, south, east, and west from the town square out into the sprawling expanse that was the gloriously named Blue Town.

On either side of the faux cobblestone street were buildings built from the same reddish-brown stucco with blue shingled roofs. Most of the buildings were single story, with two-storied buildings being reserved for the Smith, the Potter, and the various other generic and/or lame professions that somehow allowed this fictional town to thrive. At the end of each lane were the massive eight-storied buildings belonging to the four guilds.

Tyrone turned his attention back to the fountain.

Only two 16-bit guide children—a boy by the male statue with a handsaw and a girl by the female statue with a tiny star—came hustling to the fountain. I thought there were four. Both children were the typical half size of adults and had the same cloth clothing.

A white balloon appeared next to each child’s head. The boy’s was a black period, but the girl’s was a red exclamation point. Vague memories of red text—the others had been flashing, this one was steady—made him leery of the girl.

Tyrone approached the boy.

A white text bubble appeared next to the boy and black text scrolled out as he said, “Did you know David the Builder built the first four academies? It’s true. If you look at the cornerstones, you’ll see his name.”

A menu of replies appeared in Tyrone’s mind and then manifested in white thought bubbles. Two went out directly to the side of his head while the other three were arced like a rainbow over his head:

The lame conversation tree that he had with the guide kids for Bob and Carol came back to mind. Besides the initial tidbit about David erecting the buildings, options A-D were just loops that would try to make him go the direction David was pointing to join the Builders’ Guild.

Tyrone moved away from the boy.

A white text bubble appeared next to the boy as he waved. “Bye. Hope you decide to join The Builders.” The text went away and the bubble shrank to hold a lone period again.

Starting to feel a bit tipsy, two thin, hollow white ovals appear over Tyrone head. He took another sip of his high alcohol content churro-water and closed to conversation distance with the girl and her red exclamation point.

The white text bubble expanded and red text scrolled. She said, “You stole. That is against one of the rules of the guild I want to join. The Protectors say I cannot talk to you. Good-bye.” Her text bubble popped and she turned her back on him. The bubble did not re-appear like the boy’s had.

A rapid, fast-forwarded, cut scene played in the upper right of Tyrone’s vision as he recalled, clearly, picking up a blue backpack in a store and running out. And the two Blue Town guards chasing him. And then talking to them. And then he was at Bob’s statue minus the backpack and the other possessions that he’d had.

While it made sense that he wouldn’t have the backpack, he sure as shit should’ve had the other stuff that he had earned.

Tyrone walked around the girl to tell her about how the Protectors had stolen his other stuff.

Without so much as a text bubble or prompt, she turned her back on him again.

Tyrone glared at her for a moment, then decided to take his complaint to the Protectors’ Guild. Cup in hand, he headed east to give them a piece of his mind.

The Protectors

While the color of the walls on the inside of the Protectors’ Guild was the same reddish-brown stucco, the floor tiles changed to being matte gray with tiny white diagonal lines. Almost like it was supposed to represent granite.

Twenty feet directly across from the entrance was a judge-style raised desk. Brown wood railing—rails that resembled the tiny bowling pin clubs that the guards carried—spanned out ten feet from the sides of the desk and extended to the entry room sectioning off the greeting area. A Blue Town guard sat there. In addition to the vest with the dinky yellow star on the left, this one had two silver carrots on his opposite breast denoting seniority. He also sported a tight blue homburg hat.

Besides the greeting guard’s desk, the other desks in the room were more like wide decorative teachers’ types instead of the no-nonsense functional type of desk in real precincts. Same with the chairs. Hell, a pattern formed in Tyrone’s head. The two halves of the room, from the water coolers, potted plants, and closed office doors, were mirrors of the other side.

Painfully atypical, the smell of coffee and doughnuts filled the air.

Wait, doughnuts?

Tyrone scanned the waiting area. Sure as shit, there were two boxes of doughnuts on either side of the door, and just beyond them, pots of coffee. The contents of each box were identical, an assorted mix of pink sprinkled, maple bars, Boston cream, plain, chocolate glazed, and powdered doughnuts.

The two thin, hollow white ovals above his head began to rock side to side. Right on! A full-tilt inebriation had settled in from the fountain water and Tyrone really wanted to munch. He set down his empty water cup, helped himself to a maple bar, began eating, and also pulled a powdered doughnut. A doughnut in each hand, he sauntered up to the counter.

A white bubble with a red period appeared next to the greeting guard’s head.

Really? Tyrone went to conversation distance.

The text bubble expanded and red text scrolled out as the guard said, “It’s not often that a Thief comes into the Protectors’ Guild. How can I be of assistance?”

Thief was bold and italicized like the man meant it to be a slander.

Tyrone only had three bubbles this time:

Why the hell not? Tyrone chose B. The text in his white balloon came out shaky. “Hello. The Schmithhhith, hasshh, shhent me—”

The guard shook his head. A large text bubble scrolled. “As an adult, you should know that public intoxication is against the Blue Town rules. I am not sure where you got alcohol, but why don’t you have some coffee to sober up?”

Tyrone pointed his half-eaten maple bar at the guard. No words would leave his mouth.

Tyrone took a step back and then stepped forward to initiate conversation again.

A small x flashed next to the guard’s head.

In the lower right of Tyrone’s vision, text flashed into being. He went to look down at it, but no matter how far he tilted his head, he couldn’t get the text to the center of his vision. Without turning his head further, he focused on the message. (The Desk Captain refuses to speak to drunk people. Come back when you are sober. [Tip: Drinking coffee sobers you up.])

Tyrone chuckled. That fucking so-called tip would help folks fail almost all alcohol awareness tests. Coffee doesn’t work that way. All you get when you give coffee to a drunk is a wide-awake drunk.

Still, hundreds of years of pairing coffee with doughnuts made it somewhat of a tradition. Tyrone finished off his maple bar, grabbed one of the generic white porcelain cups, and held it up to the coffee machine. Black aroma lines came up from the machine to his nose and they smelled delicious. White steam lines came up from his cup as he filled it most of the way.

While his friends might scream sacrilege and cross themselves, Tyrone dunked his powered doughnut into the coffee twice and took a bite of the soggy goodness.

Fucking-A, this is good.

Though everything had a very generic quality and appearance, this pairing tapped into a nearly forgotten flavor combination that his grandfather had clued Tyrone in on when they went fishing for his thirteenth birthday. His parents wouldn’t let him have coffee and Grampa followed their rules. However, Grampa would always let Tyrone have a cup of joe. And right in the 16-bit Blue Town precinct, the doughnut, the joe, the mix was perfect to twang the fond memory.

Sobering almost instantly, three things hit Tyrone at once. Coffee here works amazing wonders, that memory of a fishing trip with his Grampa didn’t create a cut scene, and—chief of the goddamn tribe—he was in a motherfucking video game!

Fuck the stopwatch, backpack, and bread. Shit, he would even stick the question of how he got here right up Satan’s ass if it led to a way out.

Tyrone set his cup and doughnut down and stormed over to the so-called Desk Captain.

As usual, the white bubble with a period appeared. “Sorry, a Thief cannot join the Protectors’ Guild. However, now that you are sober, how can I be of assistance?”

Options appeared above Tyrone’s head, but he went straight to custom text. “How in the Fa-boing do I get out of here.” Fa-boing? Tyrone frowned. He wanted to type fuck, but the word didn’t show. He went back to change it, but fuck wouldn’t come to the door; only fa-boing was home. Fuck it. Tyrone sent the message.

The boing part of his profanity came out as a literal spring sound.

What the shit?

The guard’s face screwed up. “That kind of dirty language is not necessary. If you want to leave, go back out that door and then to any edge of town. Yellow Town is to the north, Orange Town to the east, Green Town to the south, and Brown Town is to the west.”

Tyrone went to custom text. “Fa-boing that noise. I wanna know how to get out of this mother-fa-boinging game.” The cursor went back and change his mother to mu-boing. Fuck it. Good enough for government work. Tyrone let the message fly.

The guard replied. “I already told you how to get out of town, Mr. Pottymouth.”

Growing rage widened Tyrone’s eyes. “Listen—”

The guard pointed to the door, pushed his text bubble away, and leaned in. Small red letters—sentences—appeared at the corner of his mouth. “I suggest you get the fa-boing out of here. Now.”

His fa-boing didn’t cue a sounder.

What did happen was all the office doors in the place opened and blue guards with varying hats and markings on their right breasts came out to stand just outside of their offices. To the side of each of their heads were balloons with red exclamation points.

Tyrone narrowed his eyes, raised his chin, and began to back away.

The guard nodded and pulled his text bubble back to the side of his head. “Thank you for coming by the Protectors’ Guild. I hope you find a good fit somewhere else.” The guard waved.

On his way out, Tyrone waved both fists back with both blurred middle fingers fully extended.

Seriously, What the Fa-boing?

Checking over his shoulder all the way, Tyrone rushed toward the fountain. No guards came out of the Protectors’ Guild. He hadn’t thought to flip the Desk Captain off. It just sort of happened. Like in real life. Because of that, Tyrone fully expected to get a 16-bit beatdown and to wake up in either the Flowerland hospital or the Flowerland jail.

Back near the gushing sounds and cinnamon smell around the fountain, Tyrone considered asking the boy and girl how to get out. The boy still had his black period, and the girl had her red exclamation point.

A bit more subtly, where the boy appeared passively happy, there was a distinct pixel’s worth of downward turn to the girl’s mouth that wasn’t there previously.

Son of a bitch. Is this game learning?

Tyrone stroked his bare chin. An inlaid sense of there being four kids—two boys, two girls—when he first came to the fountain flashed and faded. I knew there were four.

Two kids were missing, which meant he probably spoke to them before the reset. And with neither of them being present, the game was keeping tabs; otherwise, all would have been back in position. In fact, proof to his realization was as plain as his a Thief label now amply applied to him by Protectors and Protector wannabes.

The inlaid rapid scene of him stealing the backpack came back faster and was all that he remembered of it. Not why he went in there. Not how he got there. Only that he stole.

And was chased.

And was caught.

A disturbing thought came to roost. Fuck, what if that wasn’t my first reset?

Tyrone tried to think back. He knew what the feeling of starting a cut scene felt like and was fully aware of his complete lack of that floaty feeling. Couple that with the lack of inlaid scenes made him wonder if—

An inlaid scene of him entering the Growers’ Guild flashed into being and winked out like it was turned off instead of going its normal length.

Son of a bitch! Tyrone thought about the villainous television network in The Running Man. Not the book, but the movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Those fuckers were able to televise what they wanted, hide what they didn’t. Hell, they were even able to make Arnie into the Butcher of Bakersfield. What if some similar ass-hats were running this game?

And seriously, what the fuck was up with the Desk Captain pushing his text bubble aside to whisper to me? Can other players see my interactions? Hell, one step farther back, are there other players? Who all can see this?

The little builder boy came over and walked his period balloon into Tyrone. The scrolling text said, “If you want to make something of yourself in this world, you’ll go somewhere to gain experience, or better yet, join a guild. The Builders are the best!”

Tyrone wanted to tell the digital kid to take his advice, turn it sideways, and stick it up his fucking ass, but he wouldn’t have done it in real life so he wasn’t about to do it in the game. If this was the kid’s reality, Tyrone didn’t want to be a total dick. Cussing at a kid, if the kid hadn’t earned it, was the ultimate dick move. Even though the words would be censored, Tyrone wasn’t going to be that dick.

For some unknown reason—perhaps instinct or playing a hunch—he took a cup, scooped some of the cool water out of the fountain, and made his way south to the Growers’ Guild.

A hunch came upon Tyrone to rush the cup southward.

He’d been focused on the cup, but an acrid stench grabbed his attention. Billows of black smoke rose into the sky from just beyond the Growers’ Guild building.

He quickened his pace.

Instead of knocking on the guild’s front door, he went down the cobblestone path along the front of the building to the grass fields off to the side. Really, it was just green laminate tiles painted with some light green and black lines to make it look like grass.

An eight-story-high, reddish-brown stucco building was gushing plumes of smoke from the fire-clad roof. The animated fire covered all but a few pixels of what was supposed to be blue tiled roof. A lady in a blue-and-white milkmaid outfit with straight black hair to the middle of her back paced back and forth in front. Her arms were flailing and a large, pulsing, red exclamation point flashed in a text bubble.

Tyrone walked into it.

“Thank goodness you happened by!” The woman said, “The town granary is on fire and we need water to put it out! Quickly, go to the fountain at the center of town and bring back some water!” The frantic exclamation point turned into a frantic question mark.

The next bubble came right after the first. “Oh good, you’re back! Thank you!” She snatched the cup from him and poured it at the base of the building like she was watering a plant. In fact, Tyrone was willing to bet that that exact same animation would be done when she did water flowers.

All at once the flames went out and the building stopped smoking.

Her red question mark went away. A smiling gold star appeared.

She continued, “While no one in Blue Town will know that you saved our winter stores, I will. You came by just in time and I will not forget your great deed. Oh my, where are my manners? I am the Seedstress, the leader of the Growers’ Guild. What is your name?”

Three bubbles appeared above Tyrone’s head.

Tyrone chose C) and entered, “How in the hell did one cup of water put out that fire?” He slid the cursor back and changed his “hell” to “heck” and sent it.

The Seedstress answered, “Oh, you don’t know about the magical properties of Blue Town’s fountain water? Well, it’s truly magical. The fountain water can transform into whatever liquid you need it to be.”

Tyrone nodded. Right on! I’ll make it a pool of teleportation and I’ll pop home. He backed up to disengage.

She walked her smiling star bubble into him. “Before you go, will you tell me your name?”

He went to disengage again.

The Seedstress pushed her bubble sideways. Small black text appeared next to her mouth. “You’ve tried the fountain before. That’s not how it works. There are no easy ways out. Please accept that fact.”

Another side chat?

She pulled the bubble back into position. “I don’t mean to insist, but I cannot give you a reward if I don’t know your name.”

The same three text bubbles appeared above Tyrone’s head. He put his hand out to push one away. It felt like a... He squeezed it softly. It sorta feels like... His next squeeze was more of a caress. Like a boob.

She rolled her eyes at him and pushed her text bubble away to side chat. “It’s a water-based balloon. Nothing more.”

I don’t know. Tyrone squeeze-caressed it again. It’d been decades since he last felt a water balloon and this text balloon had a more substantial feeling to it.

Faint whistles and bells sounded that were one part fire truck and one part police siren blended together over an electronica chorus with a deep bass groove. Musical note bubbles floated at the top of his vision. The tune was as though The Lego Movie score and the Hawaii Five-0 soundtrack met while on acid, fell in love, and had a number one billboard hit for a child.

...

Jesus. Sidetracked by music and touching a balloon. Making sure not to blame his recent lack of sex for being so easily distracted, Tyrone pushed his balloon away. “So, I’m not supposed to be here. Is there a quick and easy way out? Like clicking my heels three times?” He did. Nothing changed.

She opened her mouth to answer. The whistling and bells grew louder and the top of his vision filled with scored music bubbles. A sorry expression washed over her face as the whistling and bells drew even closer. Her text was squished down to an illegible two pixels tall. The music bubbles collected and grew larger.

...

Tyrone ducked notes. “Just nod if there’s a way out.”

The Seedstress’s eyes went wide. She reached out and pulled his text balloon back close to his head.

The musical note bubbles filled his vision as the floaty feeling he had failed to notice yanked on him.

...

Bonus Round: Dance the Fire Out

The music faded as the bubbles popped in rapid succession leaving the music notes floating in midair. They jostled and wiggled against each other until they fell into columns. They then thickened and transformed into black ornaments on a wrought iron gate.

A small latch-click sounded before the gate swung full open and two-foot-tall 16-bit red bubble letters with orange outlines appeared, taking up most of Tyrone’s vision.

Bonus Round:

Dance Dance

Big Fun!

The n’s were the only normal letters in dance dance. Each d was a fancy right-pointing arrow, the a’s, up arrows, c’s, left arrows, and the e’s had small equilateral triangles added to the bottom to make down arrows. The volume of the electronica chorus with a deep bass groove turned up.

Small text appeared at the bottom right of Tyrone’s vision. Song: “To The Rescue” by Danny Jones.

The fancy text burst away. The n’s and big fun were gone leaving the arrows hanging, for a moment, before they rose up to the top of his vision. Four of the directional arrows shifted to be equally spaced from each other and hollowed out. The other four drifted off to the left to be above the Seedstress’s head and did the same.

They were still in front of the granary, but it looked—Well, it looked happier. All the various Protectors Tyrone had seen in the Protectors’ Guild—plus a few he hadn’t—became large-headed chibi versions of themselves, dancing on the various roof levels, dancing at a window, or dancing in front of the building.

Tyrone frowned. What the fuck?

“Come on, stranger,” the Seedstress said, her voice overflowing with super-injected enthusiasm. Her words were audio only. “Help me dance the fire out.”

Aw, hell no. Tyrone tried to walk away, but he was stuck; rooted to the spot. What the—

A slow stream of arrows, hues from bright yellow to deep red, started to float up from the bottom of his vision.

The Seedstress chimed, “Are you ready?”

A small, yellow, right-facing arrow neared the top where her four hollow directional arrows were anchored. Tyrone’s right-facing arrow was orange and the same distance from his four empty direction arrows.

The Seedstress cheered, “Let’s go!” She stepped to the right as the yellow arrow entered the larger hollowed one. The larger one flashed yellow and a couple of the chibis on her half of the granary cheered.

Tyrone tried to shake his head in dismay, but even that small bit of motion had been locked down. Fuck this and fuck all versions of DDR.

Another arrow, up, made it to the hollow letters.

Timed perfectly, the Seedstress stepped forward and her hollow letter flashed orange.

A faint whiff of burning wood filled the area.

“Come on, stranger.” The Seedstress nailed another arrow, and then another. She tried to cheer him into action. “You can do it.”

Does she smell that? Tyrone tried to open his mouth to ask, but his mouth wouldn’t move.

She said, “You just have to move the way the arrows point.” She giggled. “Come on. It’s fun!”

Something bright beyond the rising arrows stole his focus. On the third floor on his side of the granary, a small burst of flame broke out near where the chibi-ized Desk Captain had been dancing.

The Desk Captain was no longer dancing. His eyes had gone wide and he repeatedly pointed at the flame.

More puffs of smoke rose from various other parts of Tyrone’s half of the building and other spouts of flame bloomed into being. The one next to the Desk Captain grew taller and taller until it was as tall as the chibi.

“Oh no!” The Seedstress’s exclamation came out in a white text balloon. “Your side of the roof is on fire.”

Partly thinking of a song, but mostly thinking about the Desk Captain, Tyrone grinned inwardly. Burn, motherfucker.

Nigh invisible smoked filled the area along with the burning smell, which had become thick enough for Tyrone to taste it.

The fire next to the Desk Captain leapt onto the chibi and completely engulfed him, Human Torch style.

The Dangers of Being a Xenobiologist

My five military caste donor-parents and nineteen vat-siblings would use that phrase to mock me, relentlessly, when—at year five—I chose to spend every minute of our two free hours during the day to study alien lifeforms.

My sibs did as our rents encouraged by choosing to read biographies of exalted military strategists, logistic recounts of military campaigns, and to put in extra time training in the four-meter-tall exo-armor or the multi-ton mechanized war-armor. Not me. I had gotten enough of that in the constant training in our non-sleeping hours.

Now, as none of my sibs could, I stood on the white misty banks of Kelmer-5’s largest sea appreciating the way the mist always whited out natural vision beyond five meters.

The white-out would have my sibs on edge. As much as I’ve tried to grow as an individual, I can’t help but think about them and the collective.

They’d be keeping a weather eye on the radar mappings that—when unimpeded over the sea—swept out to five kilometers. They’d be searching the hundred meters from the shoreline up to the banyan-like trees that ranged up the ridge behind us. They’d be scanning for enemies, tracking lifeforms like the chirping birds in the trees in case they turned hostile, and minding the locations of their fellow combat-squadmates. They’d also bemoan the dense O₃ stratosphere that kept enough ultraviolet light away from the surface that their mili-exo-armor’s UV option would be almost as useless as the naked eye.

Unlike me, they wouldn’t appreciate the way the warm fig-scented O₂-rich air pressed through exo-armor vents—when opened—to weigh on our SCUBA-like undersuits. They’d also mock the meter-shorter and slimmer sci-exo-armor. Hell, they probably would’ve kept the mili-armor on instead of taking the respirator and leaving the armor idle a few meters behind. They’d never strap their loose O₂ tank between their scant breasts to revel in the cool upper layers of green-black algae-rich mud crowding around their undersuit-bootied ankles like it did to me and my nineteen fellow all human—or vat-born human—sci-squadmates.

Familiar with the terrain, all of my sci-squadmates were also walking sci-armor-free in the mud ten meters from the shallow cobalt blue water line, which was five meters from the sea shelf. Like me, they were checking up on various measuring instruments and experiments.

When staking study-claim years ago, I had chosen a spot closest to an inlet that was exactly fifty meters away from my fellow scientists. It was the furthest that protocol allowed. Because of my military upbringing and bearing, they preferred to have me as far from them as possible, and frankly, that was the way I liked it, too.

An Embarrassment of Id’imps

Retail workers think there’s nothing worse than working retail during the holiday season. And they might be right, but! Who do they call when Mr. or Mrs. A-Hole gets completely out of hand? Right, the supervisor or manager. And who do those folks call when their customer recovery tactics fail? Security.

It’s not a competition, but at least the store-roaming sales associates and cashiers get some mild-mannered customers and the occasional jovial gem. All we typically get are people so pissed off that they’ve dug deeply into their opinion and are demanding to speak with the owner, or with corporate, or with whoever can right the grievous injustice of them not being able to ride roughshod over the staff.

My name’s Gavel Chavez. Yes, Gavel is an odd name for a woman, but—if you couldn’t tell—my parents wanted me to be a judge. And, in the most pedestrian and underpaid way possible, I sort of am.

A radio call for an entrance violation at the new Games! Games!! G-G-Gamez!!! store—or Six-G as we called it—on the second floor had rumbled my radio. Because it was only one footprint unit wide, I had walked right past the cluttered, overstocked niche gaming shop with tall narrow rows twice before dispatch finally said it was between Hot Topic and Foot Locker.

I had heard security departments in Las Vegas were better, but so far they had the same barely competent people as Dallas, as Albuquerque, as Flagstaff…

Playing “Last Christmas” by Wham!, Six-G smelled like cardboard, paper, and packing peanuts. A few weeks ago, they had rushed to open for Black Friday, and it still showed in the never-dwindling stack of collapsed boxes they were trying to move as Build Your Own Games on one side of the sale sign and Disposable Game Boards on the other.

The keep-us-from-going-under desperation was strong in here.

Six-G uniforms were baby-blue smocks over blue jeans, which made the employees look like they should be working in a fabric store. Then again, I shouldn’t jab. Modeled after Las Vegas Metro Police Department, the mall’s security uniforms were tan polyester and equally unflattering.

Even if all the employees weren’t pointing to the tall, broad-shouldered, bald black man facing the corner reading a book and wearing a worn-in brown leather mid-calf trench coat, black jeans, and black sneakers, I knew—from the id’imp standing on his left shoulder—that he was the problem.

Being a manifestation of the person who crafted them, id’imps had a bad rep because—as the name of their kind implies—they are mostly id. Yes, as in Freud’s theoretical constructs. Which, for the imps, usually meant barely controlled impulses, embarrassing displays of how the person felt, and Freudian slips.

Because of the normal lack of control, there were some stores that didn’t want id’imps inside. Usually they were highbrow places like art galleries or fancy-dress shops. Other stores, like Octavia’s Secret and Cosmos Candy, encourage shoppers to bring in their id’imps. Six-G probably didn’t want them to knock over any of the high stacks of dust-gathering merchandise.

Mine had humiliated me so often that I regretted making her and always left her in her sanctum—mystical word for cage—at home. Of course, I could always call her to me, but why would I ever do that?

A Good Negro

SOME THINGS are worth dying for. Curious Negro’s father had told him that, but he never understood it—never felt it—until that day when he found the edge between the black and white world as he knew it and the perception altering world of the creator.

Beyond the edge of the panel that bordered the town and the world of Good Ol’ Days, the creator’s world had…

Curious struggled to find a word for it.

Depth.

That’s the word his old grade school teacher Smart Negro used when describing the introspective feeling that you got from a good book. But this kind of depth was more like one of Uppity Negro’s underground pamphlets. The ones that guessed at there being something beyond Good Ol’ Days. A third dimension. One where the world wasn’t only made from black ink.

The creator’s world was no longer a theory on some leaflets that Curious kept hidden under his bed. It was real and made from inks other than black. Inks he didn’t have words for. The new inks made Curious feel depth when he hoisted himself up onto the edge of the panel and peered out into the creator’s room.

On a basic level, the creator’s room looked like Curious’s own dormitory with a messy full-sized bed piled high with dark covers next to a small desk cluttered with schoolwork. While Curious’s walls were mostly as bare as his earthen floor, the opposite wall had posters of bands, mostly men with guitars and long hair. The flooring was hardwood panels.

A large light-filled window was to the left. Where Curious’s room had one pennant above the window, the creator had two: USV, and University of Southern Virginia. Curious couldn’t help but wonder, if there was a way to get there—other than going over the panel’s edge—how far would USV be from his own Nigger U.

The delicious smell of fried chicken filled the air.

There were no curvy scent lines indicating where the chicken rested in the room to show him where the smell was coming from. The smell was just there. Hanging in the air. Same for the heat in the room. He could see the light from the window, but there weren’t any wavy heat-lines to indicate the toasty warmth on his face, neck, and chest. In his world, there’d been two or more lines showing the heat source.

Boudreaux & the Tuscan Sun

Boudreaux struggled with the maddening safety harness clasp.

Keeping the flap up and kinking his fingers to dip far enough to get to the inner-lever had been tough in Zero-G. With the gravity turned on, the straps dug into his arm pits and pinched the skin at awkward angles.

The fastener proved to be impossible.

Boudreaux grumbled, “Who designed this damn thing?”

Better yet, why’d he even have to strap in? Besides the tatami mat floor, cushions covered every inch of his two-by-two-by-four-meter room.

When put on, the straps pulled him tight to the wall and squeezed him against his narrow mattress, which still released the oniony musk of whoever’s bunk this was before him.

Captain Ren had held the flap open for him during the safety demo. Safety should’ve have to be a two-person job.

Boudreaux pulled his old cleaning rag from his overall back pocket and jammed it under the metal flap. He then dug in with both index fingers to pull the inner lever and press the tiny recessed button.

The harness clacked open.

“Yes!”

His bare feet thumped on the tatami mat.

Boudreaux rubbed his pits and inspected the canvas burns under each arm. If he had been sleeping in the Kevlar mesh sleep-suit, he would’ve been fine. But getting into the sleep-suit was like diving into a chilly river, and he avoided cold whenever possible.

He made a mental note to keep the minor belt burns hidden from the other Tuscan Moon crew members. No need for them to think he was more incompetent than they already did.

They never said as much, but he’d caught a couple of their secret glances to one another.

Being the last to sign on with Captain Ren, directly before deploying into deep space, Boudreaux had been assigned the converted supply closet next to the engine room as his bunk.

He couldn’t have been happier. Finally, a place to call his own. A whole sixteen cubic meters all to himself.

No more rotating sleeping shifts on Boss Smith’s ratty spring mattresses, which poked no matter how one laid. No more stench of other overworked hands who also put off paying for a shower as long as possible. Best of all, no more boney elbows from John-Jon to jar him awake when he snored.

Captain Ren had apologized about the faint onion smell to the room. She said it was hell to get out and, in the same breath, promised the arrangement would only be temporary.

One of Captain Ren’s quick smiles flashed in Boudreaux’s mind. He shoved his palm ident on the warm rectangular plastic lockpad a millimeter from the wall.

The lockpad did nothing.

Boudrauex cleared his throat and whispered to the plastic. “Tim.” His breath bounced back at him. It smelled like the bed. He scowled and leaned away. “Captain Ren will be ultra pissed if you don’t let me out.”

The door to his bunk gave wo quick clicks. Both internal and external locks disengaged and then immediately reengaged to reward his lie. The lockpad went red.

Like the ship, Tim—the artificial intelligence—was a few decades behind current standards, but had enough smarts to match its synthesized voice to Boudraux’s his hushed tone.

Tim’s said, “The Captain locked you in.”

Bullcrap. Captain Ren had been fervent about crew controlling their quarters. The conviction in her voice is what made Boudreaux truly feel like he had finally had his only little place in the universe. How could he explain that to the Tim?

Already frustrated from fighting the safety belt, Boudreaux bit his fist to keep from cursing at Tim.

Boudraeux thought he had escaped machines telling him what he could and couldn’t do. Heck, that’s why he’d kept relocating to where A.I. had yet to be installed on planet Chi’gan; from Doomertown to Bonanza to Moku. But, as though technology had been chasing him for the past twenty years, A.I. dongles had been installed into almost every machine on the planet.

When the first generation A.I. were put in, one could trick any coffee machine into dispensing a free cup of coffee. But once the upgrades were installed in Moku—the last refuge from second gen A.I.—Chi’gan became regulation hell. Boudreaux had run out of places to move. So he’d hopped on the Pink Sol, the first ship that would take him. And it took him alright—

Boudreaux’s eyes narrowed. He pounded his fist into his palm and ground it there.

Pink Sol’s maintenance crew had been so welcoming, but before the ship had left the atmosphere, Pink Sol’s A.I.—with its voice modulation that sounded both cranky and snobby—said Boudreaux’s ident had been hacked. Captain Jerk-Face, or whatever his name was, refused to even discuss it. The only time Boudreaux saw the dark-haired captain was when he nodded to have Boudreaux drop-chuted from the ship.

Boudreaux’s anger fled.

His head swam. His stomach lurched.

The memory of being dropped from so high—

Of being at gravity’s whim—

Boudreaux shook the high-speed horror away before anxiety made him break out in stress-sweat.

“Breathe.” He sucked in and exhaled, “Breathe.”

His ident was good. It held all of his stats and records. It had been implanted in Boss Smith’s own government comm booth. His hands had just been sweaty. It’d always been a problem. Only if Captain Jerk-Face had let Boudreaux dry his hand.

Boudreaux pressed against the pad again.

Click-click. Red.

Chuck the Cross

Checking the steadiness of the two-foot wide concrete ledge with a swift kick of his black NK5 running shoes, Chuck Garcia nodded to the solid resistance before setting his foot firmly onto it. Ignoring the bickering behind him, he gazed out across the miles of tightly packed Los Angeles skyscrapers bunched like a fistful of glinting needles jammed into the night.

A primal fear — heights — churned in his undead guts as he shifted his weight forward.

Chuck gazed down the fifty-story building. Warm wind rushed car exhaust up the side. It whipped his black trench coat, black slacks, and violet silk tie gifted to him by North Lord Maze for his century of keeping peace up in Seattle. He eyed the cars honking in stop-and-go traffic far below.

He buttoned his coat to assure the silver stakes wouldn’t come into view until needed. And he would need them.

The fear inside turned to a full blown roil. Feel that, Chuck? He nodded to himself. That’s the good stuff.

The rumbling within twisted the corners of Chuck’s firm, bloodless lips breaking the grim line normally set above his wide, dimpled chin. Long idle, his sluggish blood lurched within his veins to light his muscles. Every iota of his vampiric might brimmed to fend for his life. He opened his mouth in to let his incisors fully distend.

Chuck glanced back across the gravel rooftop to the three dealers.

Peering at him from the shadows under the rooftop water tower — a sure sign of a vampire’s roost — near the fire exit at the center of the roof, they stood huddled close like Dixie court sycophants. Their bickering about rather to sell to him or not hushed to whispers. Even in the deep shadows, all three of their mouths glistened. Shine heads. A sneer scrunched Chuck’s nose. He let his contempt show.

Chuck said, “Boys, you got juice or no?”

The bulky, massive seven-foot tall vamp came from the shadows. He had the type of build that would’ve made him a lord of the fighting pits in the days before guns and flame throwers.

“Yeah.” Big Boy sounded groggy, like he’d just gotten up for the night. “We got juice.” Like most low-level L.A. Dragon-Turtles gang members, he only wore ragged blue jeans and scale tattoos covered every inch of his skin from his bald head to his bare feet. “What you got?”

Now we’re getting somewhere. Chuck dug his hands into his coat pockets. “Depends on how steeped your stuff is. Crap tokens for crap crimson.” He flashed two thin octangular copper coins, each good for eight nights of safe roost and feed at any of Dolgun’s EDM Clubs along the west coast. He stashed them away.

Given the man’s size, Chuck guessed Big Boy would appreciate strength the most so he thought about producing his blue fleck of giant’s blood. But that would make Big Boy have to get closer and Chuck wanted to keep the shine head as far away as possible for as long as possible.

Gateway Blood

“Pa?” Mother called. Dressed for the ball, she hiked her long baby blue dress carefully as to not cause wrinkles. “Pa?”

Still in my smoking robes, I leaned on the fireplace. It crackled with soothing blue freeze-fire, chilling the room nicely. My gaze returned to the trophies of hunters long since past. For some reason, Kam’s silver stake kept my attention. “Yah, Mother?”

“Oh, good. You’re not in your suit.”

Jamal & the Skeleton’s Heart

Worse than being punched in the chest, Jamal Morris clutched the wooden stake that had been shot deep into his heart as he stumbled backwards, and fell into an open grave.

Flat on his back. On the hard, damp dirt.

Stunned, his vision swam and a ringing filled his ears. Oddly, his mind tried to analyze the dirt of the grave that he laid in. Was it fertile? Could a garden be planted here instead? Was it hallowed so the dead couldn’t rise from this grave? Fuck, now I’m going to be dirty.

Shock did weird things.

The sliver of a moon high in the Miami night sky, smiled down at Jamal. Still trying to come back to his senses, his mind made a zombie-ized Cheshire cat from the stars around the moon.

“You can’t help that, Jamal.” Zomb-Cat said, “We’re all dead here.”

No, they weren’t all dead.

Not yet.

Take, for example, the mother fucker—and his mother fucking friends—who drove a mother fucking stake into his new, seven hundred, mother fucking dollar, burnt umber Burton Brothers suit. A suit that Jamal had bought specifically not to offend Perry, the prissy shapeshifting necrophile necromancer known to grave rob in the Ashton Homes Cemetery.

Only to be ambushed and staked by some gung-ho ass-hats.

Jamal sat up, and rubbed his head. His vision was clear and steady. A slight ringing still played on his ears, but the world made sense again. Mainly from discomfort, Jamal tried to pull the stake out. Nope. The fucker was in there deep.

He sighed and stood. His brown-black Johnston Murphy dress shoes—shoes that he had shined to a high gloss—sunk into the earth.

Jamal mumbled, “Mother fuckers.”

Now he looked like shit. And this was the one night he specifically didn’t want to look like shit. If he had known this was going to happened, he wouldn’t have changed out of his favorite stained, threadbare t-shirt, worn thin blue jeans or holey—not holy—tennis shoes.

Rustling sounds came from above. As did whispers. “Did you get him?” A woman’s voice.

“Yeah. I got him.” The guy sounded like a palooka. Jamal hoped the guy had something on the ball. Nothing was worse than being bested by someone who had no idea what was happening.

The woman. “Where’d he go?”

“Dunno.”

She asked, “Where’s Mark?”

“Dunno.” He was sounding more and more palooka-ish by the moment.

Jamal squatted and went to fully leap out of the grave. While his forward movement was on point, he had no hops. Only lifting a foot from the ground, he thumped into the earthen wall and fell backward.

The stake must’ve been bathed in holy water by someone who believed.

He stood. He was going to need help. And the only folks who could help him were the ones who got him into this mess.

They took turns whisper-calling Mark’s name.

Mark wasn’t going to answer. Mark had an accident.

Really, an honest accident.

A guy, probably Mark, had rushed Jamal from the bushes. He swung a silver-plated sword above his head like a two-hour YouTube kendo practitioner who obviously skipped the history and breathing lessons to get the good stuff. Jamal simply dodged. After Mark missed, he tripped forward as he freaked-out-swung at a second target. He struck the statue and fell into its arms. The sword had come from his hand in an odd sounding rebound.

The silver-plated sword went straight up, and came straight down just inside of Mark’s left collar bone; and probably through his heart. Jamal wasn’t sure, but the dude didn’t move again.

Nexus Bar & Grill

Ally

Ally Dazs rolled the heavy silk sleeves of her Census Agency robe back and crossed her arms. She’d never cared for Las Vegas. The casters here were shifty. Not only that, their dealings and allegiances, were tenuous at best. If left up to her, all the branches of her Agency would converge on the city in an unprecedented audit.

She smiled at the thought of the slimiest of the city’s creeps crumpling under the weight of all their dark dealings being brought out into the light for the starwise of the world to see. She smirked at the thought of the order that would come from the momentary—in the grand scheme of things—chaos.

But that wasn’t why she was here.

The Census Agency had received notice that ownership of the Nexus Bar & Grill had changed hands, and it was her job to figure out who now owned one of the most powerful buildings in the city.

Taking a moment for herself, Ally reveled in the new spring sunshine peaking over Sunrise Mountain and warming her skin. Her smile blossomed wider. The local chapter of her alma mater had a guest house on the mountain. Perhaps, once done here, she’d stop by to visit with the Sisterhood and use their guest dorms to recover from the spell.

Bringing her focus inward, Ally ignored the hum and exhaust from the few mundane cars driving Las Vegas Boulevard, and began to gather her focus to cast Temporas Illum Orchalance. While not the strongest post-cognitive divination spell she knew, it was the most thorough.

Had she been at a lesser structure, she’d be worried about casting even the simplest spell with so many mundanes within easy breach distance, but The Nexus Bar & Grill was one of the city’s oldest nodes. Not only that, but there had once been a dueling platform out back; so the Mystique had been laid so thick here that she could almost feel it. The only way a mundane would be able to see or find this place is if they were invited, and—besides being highly illegal—only a true idiot would ever do that.

If in operation, the Nexus Bar & Grill wouldn’t be open for another couple hours and, since no one in this city could really be trusted to give her the answer as to who owned the place; it was up to her, and her divination, to ferret it out.

While Temporas Illum Orchalance would reveal everything that transpired during the transfer of ownership, the information would be jumbled and a little loose at first; but she’d get it woven together. Making sense of the independent timelines as they came together was something few could do well, and Ally stood amongst the top in her field.

Transfer of ownership. What a nice and innocuous phrase.

The higher ups at the Agency never dug into the high rates of Paramountcy—the worst kind of legalized theft—that took place in Las Vegas every decade. If North America was on the scale, Las Vegas would rank up there with Cairo, Hong Kong, Paris, and Rio de Janeiro. If anyone really studied the numbers, they’d see that Las Vegas was completely rotten. But, of course, that kind of thing never happened in North America.

Perhaps she’d find a thread, like she had in Montreal, that she could use to make the Agency take notice.

Hoping that would be the case, Ally pushed all thoughts out of her mind so that she could recite the fifteen-minute incantation. She knew the spell well. With so much desire for the information, Ally made sure to take her time and not rush.

She’d know. She just needed to… take… her… time.

The wonderful scen of daisies pillowed the area as her eyes rolled back and the threads of all involved came to her. “Five beings,” she whispered. The spell began to weave them together and two slipped out. She nodded. “Three partook.” Mist fell from the braid of mindsets as it thickened into a circlet that came to rest on Ally’s brow.

She inhaled, and breathed, “Show me.”

The Boy

Like stepping into a cross-section of time, Benjamin Baxter pushed through Nexus Bar & Grill’s squeaky, rough, old-fashioned saloon doors. Imagining, as he usually had, that he was in a Western, he squinted and growled through gritted teeth. “I’m lookin’ for the man who shot my pa’”

No one answered. Could’ve he beaten all his classmates here?

His favorite part of the diner—the magical ice cream scoopers—floated up from the ice cream bar. Normally at the ready, they hovered in the air to entice any who came in and only went dormant after an hour of non-use. He must’ve been the first one.

As usual, he rubbed the tall, narrow, jade saber-tooth tiger tiki totem at the end of the entryway. He shuffled across the retro, pink-and-red checkered 1980’s tile to toss his school pack into the deep, 1950’s-era booth closest to the 21 and older sign near the rear wall.

His pack deep into the corner, Ben—as though caught by the nose—rose up onto his toes to take in the scent of the eternally-grilling onions. His stomach growled.

Kevin, LeRoy, and Neil would give him crap for ordering without them… But he was ready to eat.

Shrugging off the social pressure, he bounced into the booth. “Should’ve gotten here faster, guys.” He nodded. That’s what he’d say to them between bites. They’d probably make a play for his golden steak-cuts fries, and he wouldn’t stop them. While delicious, if he ate all of the golden goodies, they’d be nothing but unwanted squatters where ice cream, pie, or cake should go.

Reaping a Hateful Harvest

Uog-Toth enjoyed this one’s spirit.

Gene Gibbs

“You’re not going to beat me!” Gene Gibbs couldn’t help but feel crazy yelling at the front door because that’s the kind of shit only crazy people do. But he wasn’t crazy, and if he couldn’t get out of this fucking house, he was going to burn the bitch down.

Shadows played at the corner of his eyes.

Since they’d been doing that for the past three days, he wanted to ignore them, but unlike the other times, this one was large enough to be a person. Or something else.

He spun.

Having difficulty between knowing if he was awake or in his nightmares, Gene expected the walls and ceiling of the entry hall of the early 1900’s house to be covered in the swirling black tendrilly morass that reeked of death and exuded derision, and to feel That Presence— That Someone. That Something; full of hate and hunger waited in the kitchen. In the walls. In the ceiling. Everywhere.

The walls and ceiling were bare dirty-white plaster. The corkboard flooring in the hallway gave way to tiny white and Gainesboro gray tile flooring; halfway completed in the empty kitchen. The stairs on his left that led up to the landing were upholstered in hunter green, 1970’s shag carpet until they turned right to go to the second floor. Yet another partially completed renovation. Right now, the stairs were just stairs. They didn’t feel like they lead up to death.

In case whatever that was at the corner of his eye had hopped into the living room, Gene took a quick step and peeked in.

Nothing there either. Just more corkboard floor, the lawnmower he had brought in to fix on its side next to his tools, and the wide brick fireplace.

So, it was just him in his navy-blue coveralls. In the hallway. Holding a cool mason jar of gasoline.

He had punctured the lid first to stuff a ripped portion of his flannel pajama bottoms through. The cloth had absorbed some of the gasoline inside and the fumes reminded him of what he had planned on doing.

Soul Survivor

Rain pattered softly on John Snider’s M1 helmet and shoulders as he knelt in the thigh-high elephant grass, his eye line just above the blades. Already soaked through, his knee touched down in a puddle and he found comfort in the soft muck.

Still, on nights like this, even deep in Charlie’s hot and sticky backyard, it always reminded John of a hunting expedition with his dad up in Northern Nevada... And he had one of those Tahoe bucks in his sights.

Almost like one of those gorgeous dewy morning years gone by, moonlight glimmered around the gap in the wet grass where there had been movement.

On-point for the first time since joining the half-cracked forward advance squad calling themselves Boudreaux’s Bad Boys—Trip Brav for short—John felt blessed to not be back with the main group. Except for Boudreaux himself, every single one of them had a vacant look to their eyes that made John’s neck hairs rise.

It wasn’t the thousand-yard stare. John had seen that plenty, and it was usually good to have at least one grunt with you who had the stare. No, these guys seemed to be seeing something all around the landscape that he couldn’t see. And as for Boudreaux, the least disconcerting thing about the Cajun was his black-and-white skull face paint.

Signaling Ace, his slackman, John held up a fist.

The faint chatter much further behind them stopped.

John squeezed the trigger. Sarah—the name John had given to his M14—kicked into his shoulder as she cracked off a shot. Down range, just inside the moonlit wood line that led to another Godforsaken rice paddy, a quick crimson splash rose off the still bundle that he’d been eyeing in the damn elephant grass for the past thirty seconds.

The Weird Shit That Happened Because of Tricia Fisher

Having been told by Mrs. Edsen to go wait in her cold office, Tricia Fisher just knew she was going to be fired. This was her third time being sent to the office while Mrs. Edsen smoothed things over with the customer. And no one survived a third trip.

In her teens, Tricia had indirectly learned that fidgeting and looking unsure usually made her various managers’ hearts melt, granting extended probation or a series of one more chances. Somewhere in her early twenties, the fidgeting seemed to trigger a rapid rules-are-rules response.

Holding her left hand in her right, Tricia made a concerted effort not to fidget.

The air conditioning hummed on. A vent blew right down on her. She never understood why they had the A/C on back here during winter. It’d make more sense for it to be kept warm like the rest of the salon.

Tricia hunched her shoulders and pulled her arms tighter to herself.

The salon was at the rear corner of a drab beige strip mall. Tricia often looked on the entire area as she walked from the bus stop. The same beige paint was used on the inside of the windowless office. While the room was just a little larger than the room she and her little Matthew shared at her parents’ house, it felt smaller. And had fewer decorations than any other office that she’d been in.

Black four-drawer filing cabinets lined the back wall, shortening the room a bit. Freshly slicked Mop & Glo wooden flooring created an L-shape that marked two-thirds of the room’s space as off limits. Bosses only. There were two big, comfy-looking black chairs at the desk—one for Mrs. Edsen and one off to the right on the short side of the desk. Invite only.

When Tricia recently turned thirty, her dad had teased her in his non-teasing way—in front of her son—that she was now older than the numbers of jobs that she had had since she was sixteen. Her mom tried to hush him, but Dad had then started to list them all. Every. Single. One.

Sharp laughter came from just outside the oak-framed glass door.

Ivy, the manager, was also the chief nail tech, and had the station closest to the office. The super busybody, and ultimate gossip, laughed her I’m-only-laughing-to-make-sure-everyone-knows-I’m-here laugh. The customers thought it was genuine, but everyone who worked at Nails N’ Thangs got to know Ivy’s laughs.

The client being treated must’ve said something close to funny and Ivy capitalized on it.

Tricia scanned the office again.

Besides three small picture frames on the desk facing where Mrs. Edsen would sit, there was nothing to use.

Through her various jobs, Tricia had learned a few tricks to not get fired. One was never snoop in the bosses’ office because some had cameras. The second was never lie or create a spectacle. Neither tended to work, and both had a way of coming back at you.

While she preferred to strike up a kinship through pictures and decorations, there was nothing here to clue her in. Sometimes she’d try to help the boss relate to her and the troubles of her age, but that—like the fidgeting—was becoming more of a sure way out the door. As a last ditch effort, she’d mention her son or that she had to move back home with her parents to get out of her abusive relationship with Burt. If that didn’t get the boss, nothing would.