Merlin High:

The Art of the Duel

by

Bek D Corbin

Edited by Steve Zink

 

The first thing that Vic noticed as he was waking up was that his panties didn’t fit. His eyes popped wide open, and he clutched his chest. Through the flannel nightie, he could tell that his chest was flat. No pecs or rippled abs, dammit all, but no boobs, either.

He bolted out of bed and scrambled over to his mirror. Yes! There were still a few curlers stuck to his new-penny red hair, but it was so short that most of the curlers had fallen off on the bed. The night facial mask was still on his face, but his features where still the masculine features that he’d grown into.

“Yes!” he exulted, arms stretched out into a victory dance. He reached down and began to take off the panties that where crowding his crotch, when he remembered. He looked around, and yes, there was Megan, his seven-year-old kid sister, still asleep, her arms wrapped possessively around Slyboots.

He stalked over and unwrapped Megan’s arms from around his familiar. *humphmffff?* Megan mumbled as she started to wake up. “Wuzzup, Vickie?”

“Time for you to go to you OWN room,” Vic said sternly. “I gotta get dressed, and I don’t want you raising a ruckus.”

“Oh,” Megan grumped, as she woke up completely and glowered at him. “It’s YOU.”

“Of course it’s me,” he shot back, “it’s MY room, who else would it be?”

Megan crawled out of the bed with immense seven-year-old dignity and stuck her tongue out at Vic. “Vickie’s NICE!”

“Yeah, so I keep hearing.” 

Megan swept Slyboots up in her arms and started to leave. “Boots,” Vic said in a flat voice. Slyboots wriggled out of Megan’s arms and ran back into Vic’s room. The little silver fox jumped up on the rumpled bed and let out a cavernous fox yawn. *Well, you’re back.*

“Let me guess - you’re not happy to see me.”

*Vic, I’m your familiar; I love both sides of your being.*

“But you prefer Vickie.”

*I never said that.*

“Why not? Everyone else does.”

*You know that that’s not true.*

“Ah, leave it alone.” Vic looked at the dresser top. “Jeez, would you look at all this junk? Ma keeps sticking me with the brothers’ hand-me-downs, says new clothes are too EXPENSIVE, but she spares no expense for dear sweet Vickie!” With a snarl he swept all the beauty products into a wastebasket, and set about wiping off the beauty mask.

That done, he carefully checked the days marked off on the calendar. Nine days, and there was no real way to accurately measure the hours. Man, he hated the whole ‘change in your sleep’ bit! Still, there was an increase of at least One Day and Eight hours. Then he found his journal and checked. One thing that Vickie and he actually cooperated on was keeping track of how long the change lasted, and any indicators as to the progress. Of course, they had diametrically opposed reasons for figuring out the reason why his changes were getting longer - she wanted them to get even longer, and he wanted to whittle them back down to overnight, like they’d been at first.

Jeezus Kee-rist, would look at those entries? His entries were short, sweet and to the point. Her entries were long, rambling, and went off in all directions. He remembered most of what that she’d done, though from a radically different point of view. Oh well, at least the bitch was good about getting her homework done on time. And, when he had time, he’d go over what she’d written. Their teachers said that seeing things from a different point of view tended to show you things that you missed, or glossed over before.

Then his panties bunched up, and Vic remembered to get out of Vickie’s nightclothes.

*****

Vic went down to breakfast in his Merlin High school uniform. “Well, Good Morning, Sweetheart!” his mother started off cheerily as Slyboots scampered into the kitchen ahead of him. Then she saw Vic. “Oh. You’re back!”

“Yes, it’s me. Remember me? Vic? Your son? The one who lives here and catches all the goblins for free? Maybe you would prefer Little Miss Perfect to waft downstairs, in a shower of rose petals, accompanied by little tweeting birds?”

“Now, now, you’re my son, and I love you - BUT, you could stand to learn a lesson or two from your feminine side! SHE applies herself! And-” From there, Moira O’Bryan went on to enumerate the ways that her son could improve himself. While they were definitely Blue Collar, the O’Bryans had both great expectations and very high standards. When Magic first came back into the world, lovely Moira Lafferty had risked the wrath of her parish priest to ask Tarisa, a proven witch, which man she should marry, Richard Barry or Lyle MacReady. To her surprise, the witch had told Moira that if she married Richard Barry, her marriage would be passionate but short, and if she married Lyle MacReady, her future would be long and secure, but boring and childless. But, if she married Keith O’Bryan, a man who wasn’t really on Moira’s nuptial radar, her marriage would be happy and long, and she would have many remarkable children.

Tarisa had proven right. While Moira and Keith’s marriage hadn’t been the stuff that romance novels are made of, they proved a good couple, and extramarital adventures were never a real danger in that house. And the children! Paul, the eldest, was the big, barrel-chested, bull-necked ‘Mick’ sort of Irishman that barroom legends are made of. He was doing well in college on a Football scholarship, and he was rumored to be a Front Four all by himself. Not that he was a ‘dumb jock’ - he was studying for an MBA, and he meant it. Even a short career with the NFL would pay for schooling for the rest of them. Richard, the next youngest, was tall, imposing, dynamic and brilliant, the very image of the famous ‘Irish Priests’ that had kept the unruly Shanty Irish in church and minding their manners in the 19th Century. Not that Richard was headed for the Seminary; he was going to College next year, with an eye toward Medical School. Jonathan, who was still in high school, was a handsome, silver-tongued charmer with a razor wit. If he didn’t become a lawyer, and a successful one at that, there was something very wrong with the universe. The youngest, Megan, was bright as a penny and a thousand times as dear.

But Victor, the youngest of the boys, seemed to prove that even Tarisa couldn’t hit the bullseye every time. It wasn’t that he wasn’t smart, or quick, or fit, it was just that he didn’t seem to be able to pull it all together. He was, in a word, a loser. A loser and a wiseass, who preferred pranks and getting in trouble with his equally worthless buddies.

Moira sat a plate of hash browns, eggs and sausages in front of her youngest son, and gave him a kiss on the temple. “Vic, honey, I want only the best for you, but if you don’t knuckle down and start applying yourself, what’s gonna happen to you? You know they won’t let you work in any area except magic, if you know magic.”

Dad, Rick and Jon all came down, and had the same reaction. “Oh. It’s you.” When Vic confronted them with their blatant preference, Rick said, “Damn straight, I prefer the side of you that could get into Stanford, MIT&T or Chicago Magical! Squirt, you've got everything that it takes, except the good sense that God gave a goose! Vickie could be a Th.D., with a six-figure a year practice, but you? All I see for you is a job catching goblins or mopping up toxic vibes! And that’s only if Uncle Kyle doesn’t get his hooks into you!”

“Hey, Uncle Kyle is cool.”

“Uncle Kyle is a hoodlum and a goon,” Rick snarled, “and if you gave him anything to use, he’d grass you out to the Cops in a gnat’s heartbeat!” Rick leaned over and gave Vic the Inquisitor’s Eye. “That good-for-nothing hasn’t been trying to get you to do anything stupid, now has he? Not that you need the excuse...” he ended in a mutter.

Keith O’Bryan looked over at his son with a sort of weary exasperation and said, “Son, you talk like Vickie’s another person. She ain’t. She’s just a part of you. Anything that Vickie can do, you can do. Like Rick said, Vickie could get into Stanford or MIT&T. That means, if you put your mind to it, so could you. Vic, all this means is that we want you to do the right thing by yourself: get good grades, go to a good school and make a real life for yourself. Don’t be a bum, like my idiot brother Kyle, and go around picking at whatever scraps you can find on the street. Son, if you don’t pick up your grades in your magic courses, you’re gonna wind up like Artie Culligan, crawling through the sewers, lookin’ for magical vermin.”

“Hey, you should be glad that you have at least ONE son who’ll be out there,” Vic returned mulishly, “earning a living, instead of lollygaging in college, breaking your backs for tuition and expenses. Besides, Merlin’s a Vocational School - even with Straight A’s, I’d still have to go to one of those la-de-da Prep schools, like Carolinus, for at least two years before anyplace like Von Junzt or Toronto Thaumaturgy would even look either one of me. And you know how much those places cost. Isn’t the cost of that Prep school you’re sending Rick to breaking your backs enough?”

“We’ll find a way,” Mom said with a sniff that said that it was already decided, and that he’d better get used to the idea. “Besides, Father Ethan tells me that if Vickie keeps up the good work and keeps coming to Mass, that he’ll nominate her for one of those magic scholarships that the Arch-Diocese is offering.”

Wonderful, Vic said to himself, even my pastor likes her even more than me.

Then a voice came wafting down the stairs, “Hey, Moy, I think Himself wants breakfast in bed this morning!” Then Fay came down into the kitchen proper. Faythleen Lafferty was eleven years younger than her oldest sister, and was still working it, though it was hard to tell in her dressing gown and curlers.

“What?” Dad grumped teasingly, “haven’t you moved out YET?”

“Hey,” she shot back as Moira handed her a cup of coffee, “at least _I’m_ not still living in my father-in-law’s house!” Then she saw Vic. “Oh, you’re back! I was beginning to worry!”

“It’s nice to hear that SOMEONE likes me better than Vickie,” Vic said pettishly.

Fay settled herself down to sip her coffee. “Oh, I like Vickie, all right. Nice to have another blonde, in this sea of red hair.” Fay touched a hand to her own curlered blonde hair (Max Vector™ #165, Malibu Sunshine©). Then, she beamed at Vic. “But you’re still my favorite nephew!” She leaned over and whispered, “So, is there any chance of scoring any more of that Rosedew skin lotion?”

Vic thought it over for a moment. “I think so, but Sewer-babies haven’t been that thick around, for at least a few weeks now. I might be able to trade around, and get someone to brew some up, but remember, we’re talking High School Alchemy.”

Fay beamed at him again and tousled his hair. “Awww, you wouldn’t let anything happen to your dear old auntie, now would you?”

Mom rather pointedly handed Fay the tray to take to their demanding father, up in his bed. As Fay mounted the stairs, Mom turned on Vic. “You shouldn’t encourage her like that. If you stop supplying her with those damfool youth potions, she might get serious and stop looking for the perfect Doctor or Lawyer with Old Money parents and an Adonis physique, and actually settle down with someone REAL.”   

Rick paused in shoveling food into his mouth. “What are you readin’ there, Vic?”

“I’m re-reading Vickie’s notes on her calculations about all of this.”

“Not nice to read a lady’s diary, Squirt.”

“Hey, it’s MY Journal! I’m hoping that if I look at this from this side, I’ll see something that she missed. Maybe I can find a way to keep the bitch in her bottle.”

Mom bridled at this. “Now, don’t you go doing something-” but it was too late. Tapping into his link with his Mist Fox familiar, Vic had telported out of the kitchen.

Then, suddenly, he was back. “Sorry! Forgot my schoolbag!” And then he was gone again.

Mom gave a martyred sigh and reached for the kitchen phone. “Hello? Mrs. Welles? This is Mrs. O’Bryan. Is Dylan still there?

*****

Vic could only ‘jaunt’ about fifty feet or so at a clip, but he could string them along in ‘relays’, so that he could cover a lot of ground quickly. Besides being quick, it was damn hard to catch him like this. He’d picked up some quick money this way, making deliveries for his Uncle Kyle.

Of course, there were other applications for his little knack. Vic made a two-block detour on his way to school. Two of the eight ley lines that the school tapped into passed through a two story house, the upper story of which was rented out to Mister Quinton, who was in charge of the Enchantment lab. Is was common knowledge that Mr. Quinton also did some experiments of his own, and had a very nice little lab set up in one of the spare rooms. Vic ducked around a corner, pulled out his Invisibility talisman, and faded from sight. Once he was sure that he was invisible, he jaunted over to the back porch that Mr. Quinton used for a front door, and waited.

As per usual, Mr. Quinton came bustling out of his door, in a hurry to get to school. He was, understandably, rather paranoid about students getting into the supplies locker at school.

Maybe he should have been more worried about students getting into his supplies at home.

Vic slipped unseen past Quinton as he fumbled for his keys to lock the door. Vic stood stock still, waiting for one of Quinton’s wards, or maybe Quinton’s gnomish familiar to sense him. Nothing. Vic heard Quinton hurry down the stairs. When the sound of steps on the stairs stopped, Vic moved very carefully into the room that Quinton used as a lab. He’d been there before, so he knew that Quinton kept the keys to the storage locker in a magnetic box under the worktable. He took care to check for any other traps, before opening the locker.

Yes, there it was, clearly labeled, though in Latin. Like any kid who’d had to suffer through Catholic School wouldn’t know that ‘Sanguis Lamia’, meant Lamia’s blood. And Lamia’s blood was just what he needed. Normally, Vic wouldn’t take this much risk, just for an Ofuda, but he really needed this one, and at $350 an ounce, there was no way that he could afford this on his own.

Besides, Mr. Quinton was a teacher, so this was technically school supplies.

He carefully copied out the magical diagram in Lamia’s blood, capped the bottle, replaced it, shut the locker and replaced the keys. There! Done! Now, all he had to do was get out, before Quinton’s familiar got wind of him.

Fortunately, while Quinton’s wards would have kept him from jaunting in, there was nothing to keep him from jaunting out.

Still, the little detour had chewed up a lot of time, so Vic had to keep jaunting to make up for it. But while it’s quick, moving that way is tiring, and you chance missing an opportunity along the way. Merlin Vocational, Vic’s school, was located on a nexus of no less than eight elemental ley lines, with a little help from a system of steering stele. Also, it was in the direct center of ‘The Pit’, a mysterious very shallow crater formed when ‘the TV exploded’, but for some bizarre reason didn’t destroy any of the buildings. The school itself was gematrically designed to focus magical energies in toward the school. As a result, all the goblins and spooks and other weird beings in the area were drawn almost magnetically to the school. If they got onto the school grounds proper, they were school property; but, if you caught them before they got past the school gates, they were yours to do with as you saw fit.

Then, Vic heard the soft wailing of a baby. It was soft, so soft that you really had to strain your ears to hear it. He tracked the sound to a storm grate that lead down into the sewers. As he craned around, he just barely managed to make out the form of a weakly crying baby, wrapped up in a blanket, tragically twitching, reaching out for whatever comfort it could find.

Well, Vic could hardly just stand by and do nothing! He jaunted down into the sewer. Following the sounds of the baby’s crying, he carefully walked through the sewer. He stopped and pulled out a large blank card and three pieces of colored chalk. He drew a ‘funnel’ and a circle surrounded by mystic characters. He drew a character on the card and set in the center of the circle. Then he said, “Boots, SIC IT!”

The Fox familiar charged forward, growling. The baby suddenly stopped whimpering and looked up, startled. “What the bloody HELL?” It said in a nasal voice. As Boots sank her sharp teeth into the ‘baby’s’ arm, it looked over and saw Vic striding forward, pulling a long be-knobbed stick out of his schoolbag. “Aaawww, Maaannn...!”

The Sewer Baby managed to duck between Vic’s legs, and scampered along as fast as it could on webbed frog’s feet. Its pudgy little hands were now long claws, and its wide-open mouth was full of long sharp teeth. It was in such a panic to escape the mageling chasing after it, that it didn’t notice the ‘funnel’ chalked onto the walkway until it was guided right on top of the card, where it was trapped.

Vic strolled up and gave the Sewer Baby a brisk whack on the noggin, which forced the goblin down into the card. Then he picked up the card and looked at it. The Sewer Baby was now only a two-dimensional rendition of itself. The picture showed the claws that it used to latch onto those tenderhearted fools who came down into the sewer to rescue a poor abandoned infant, and the sharp fangs that it used to suck out the milk of human kindness. If Vic wanted to, he could call the goblin out, and bend it to his will. One of the Dueling games pit goblins against each other. Not that he would use this one in a duel; Sewer Babies were lousy duelers. They were vile creatures, which relied on what there was of the better side of human nature to betray people who were rising to a heroic effort. No, better to boil the damn thing down and reverse its ectoplasmic polarity, so that it became the very milk of human kindness that it craved. If nothing else, it would make the Rosedew lotion that Aunt Fay wanted.

Vic jaunted back out of the sewer, and checked out the markings on the card as he strolled toward school. Well! This was a juicy one! It must be the last Sewer Baby left in the region, and without all the competition, it was feeding on suckers right and left. He must try and isolate the matrix for its ‘Forget-Me-Now’ power; no telling what he could get away with, with a Forget-Me-Now Talisman. Lucky he heard that cry...

Lucky...

Vic dug around in his schoolbag for his Sorcery book, and opened it to the Stantz Diagram. Taking note of the time, Vic touched his finger to halfway between ‘Eight’ and ‘Nine’, and ran it around the edge of the diagram. Yes, indeed, eleven of the twelve ‘petals’ of the ‘rose’ glowed. It really was his lucky day!

He pulled out his luckstone, and touched the connected rabbit’s foot to four of the ‘petals’. The petals faded, and the luckstone glowed green a little. The problem with lucky days, is that everyone tries to mooch some good luck off of you, and you never know when you’re going to need a little good luck. Better to have a little stashed away, where no one can mooch any off of you. Not too much - no sense in tempting bad luck, even on a lucky day. Four petals worth left seven petals of good luck, enough for a smart man to do anything that he needed to do.

With a definite sense that it was going to be a good day, Vic set across the last few blocks to Merlin High.

Merlin High was specifically designed to be a magical school. While actual sorcerers had had a large say in such matters as the location and the direction of the main entrances and such, mundane architects had designed the rest. Mundane architects who obviously thought that a magical school should LOOK like a magical school. Merlin Vocational was a four-story high hollow pentagon, with high hip roofs, and lots of gothic arches and windows. There were gargoyles and ‘guardian figures’ all over the place, and God only knew which - if any - of them actually did anything. The main southward opening entrance was flanked by a pair of very no nonsense looking female sphinxes (known lovingly by the students as ‘Hilda and Zelda’) and the main gates to the fence that surrounded the place were guarded by a pair of Griffins (known as ‘Ruff and Reddy’).

Two boys, one tall and gangly, the other beefy, were lounging against the pedestal of the griffin known as ‘Reddy’, amusing themselves making unwonted remarks to girls as they went by. They were chiefly remarkable because they didn’t have familiars by them, which was because neither of them had bound a familiar to them. Which was odd, as most students at Merlin Vocational had familiars. Familiars weren’t just pets, or even intelligent magical assistants. They were the physical manifestations of the ‘Guardian Forces’ that Mages bound to themselves. With these Guardian Forces, the Mages could command greater power, and actively tap into the magical forces of other spirits.

There were, of course, rumors as to why these two hadn’t bound familiars. First and foremost was that they had tried, and the spell simply didn’t work, which was the sign of the loser who was going to wind up doing the grunt work for other, more powerful mages. Another was that they hadn’t cast the Invitation spell, because they were afraid of what they’d get. The spell that brings a familiar to a Mage seeks out the being most compatible to them, and, well, some people got familiars that made even THEM uncomfortable. Another theory was that they’d cast the spells and the spells had worked, but for some reason, the familiars never came - which opened up a whole new rather nasty set of possibilities. And there was the possibility that they had, but they hadn’t been able to bind the familiars. Vic’s personal theory, never spoken, was that they had summoned and bound their familiars, but they kept them at home, because they were embarrassed of them.

“Yo, Guys!” Vic called out as he strode toward them, “Howcum you didn’t meet me by Dermott’s, like uze?”

‘Long Tom’, the tall one, and ‘Big Ben’, the hefty one, looked at him and showed glad surprise. “Yo, Vic! You’re back!’

“Oh, Man, how many times am I gonna hear THAT t’day?” Vic grunted as they shook his hand.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” Long Tom said as he resumed slouching against the pedestal, “but we weren’t really expectin’ you.”

“Yeah,” Big Ben grunted, “how many days was it THIS time?”

“Nine and change,” Vic returned.

“Hey,” Long Tom said, “if you gotta go dueling, do it with yer fox, or a goblin. At least until you get some real power of yer own, and you can start winnin’. We’re losin’ you for weeks at a stretch, as is.”

“That’s the problem, Tom, and you know it,” Vic shot back. “I can’t get more power unless I duel for it and win, but I can’t win because I don’t have enough power! Every time it looks like I’m starting to build up some power, that asshole Dylan Welles or one of his buddies comes along and slaps me down, and takes it!”

“Yep, vicious circle,” Big Ben commiserated.

“You just need to be a little more choosy about who you pick on - er, I mean, who you select to duel with.”

“Or at least come up with an edge,” Vic sighed.

Long Tom gave Vic a hard look. “Hey, I remember yesterday, Vickie was in three duels runnin’, and kicked ass. She was slingin’ around some major mojo. Howcum you can’t tap into that?”

Vic grated his teeth. “I dunno, and it’s really pissing me off. If I could tap into any of that magic that she’s hoarding, I could kick some serious ass. I just wish that I knew how she was keeping it from me!”

Tom looked at Vic harder. “Yeah, and while we’re at it, what’s up with this ‘her’ crap? You ain’t the only guy - or even girl - at this school who changes sex when they screw up magically, y’know, but they’re all like, ‘well, it’s me, but with boobs’. But you? It’s like yer one person as a dude, and annuther as a chick! What are you up to, Man?”

Vic canted his head back, bumping it against the pedestal. “I don’t KNOW! It’s like I ‘m there, watching over her shoulder, but I can’t DO anything! And I don’t always get what she’s doing or thinking or planning! And I KNOW that she’s out to take over!”

Big Ben just glowered, “Sounds schizo t’me.”

“Imagine what it’s like from THIS side,” Vic growled back.

The Ten-minute bell rang, and they slouched off to class. As Vic was checking his locker for any surprises, a sleek black cat walked between his legs and started rubbing against them. Before she could even lay a hand on his shoulder, Vic asked, “So, waddya want this time, Lexie?”

Alexandra ‘Lexie’ Verlaine leaned against the bank of lockers with a pout on her sleek kittenish face. “And what makes you think that I want anything?”

“I’ve seen you work, Lex,” Vic returned, making sure that his schoolbag was well sealed. After all, misdirection is one of the classic techniques for slipping a Hex Slip into a mark’s belongings. “But don’t let that stop you from buttering me up.” He leaned forward with a leer.

Not that Lexie wasn’t worth leering at. At 16, she was past the ‘awkward stage’ and obviously well on her way to becoming a real heartbreaker, with long lustrous black hair, large equally lustrous sapphire blue sloe eyes, full pouting lips and a body-

Vic pulled himself back to the here and now. One of the problems with spending so much time as a girl, was that he got out of practice in dealing with his hormones.

“Well, there IS a little something that you could do for me...”

“And what pray tell, is it?”

“Well, you know Donna Sachs, in the Morning Session? Well, she’s been talking trash about me, and well, I thought that I’d teach her a lesson...”

Vic raised his eyebrows. “Well, why didn’t you SAY so? I’m all about payback!”

Lexie reached into an envelope and pulled out a strip of paper, about the size of a dollar bill. “I’d like you to slip this to her. She’s expecting something from ME, but you’re so good at this sort of thing...”

Vic pulled a plastic clothespin from a pocket and took the slip. He read it carefully, just in case Lexie had something nastier that a little practical joke in mind, and was looking to set up Vic to take the fall for it. “Lessee now -- I don’t see anything particularly nasty about this --“ He spared Lexie a look. “What does it do?”

Lexie gave him a wide, toothy and rather evil grin. “It’s the ‘Double Talk’ spell. Whenever she says anything, a second voice will repeat what she says, but it will say what she REALLY means.”

Vic grinned in appreciation. “oohhh... Very Niiiccceee... No physical damage, but she’ll be convicted by her own words. Just a sec.” He pulled a talisman out of his schoolbag. “Now, where would she be right now?” 

“In the central courtyard, near the southwest entrance, yakking with her buddies, trashing someone else’s reputation.”

“Okay, just a sec.” Vic appeared to step into a classroom, but when Lexie opened the door, he was nowhere to be seen. Lexie nodded in appreciation. None of this juvenile ‘See? I can teleport!’ crap. And, if she was right, the talisman that he’d pulled out was an invisibility talisman. Invisibility and teleportation were a remarkably effective combination, blending the best of the two techniques, while canceling out each other’s glaring flaws.

She picked up Chandra, her cat familiar, and petted her as she waited by the locker. It was getting close to class time, when Vic suddenly tapped her on the shoulder. “Boo!”

“Oh!” Lexie jumped, more out of politeness than shock. “Did you get it to her?”

Vic nodded smugly. “Wait until after she picks up her books, and then hit her with your questions.”

Lexie gave him a half-exasperated, half-disappointed look. “In her BOOKS? Is that the best that you can do?”

“Hey,” he defended himself, “EVERYONE watches their books, just because it IS such an obvious ploy, which is why it’s so artistic - they were watching, but I still got it to her, anyway. She’ll never see it coming, Lex.”

She grinned in appreciation. “They were all watching, and you STILL managed to slip it into her book?”

Vic just spread his hands and grinned in a ‘what can I say? I’m GOOD!’ gesture. Then he leaned in and grinned again. “So, how about returning the favor, and going with me over to Pop Tate’s™ after school?” Pop Tate’s was the local unit of a national franchise of ‘Ice Cream Fountains’ done in the 1940’s style. They also sold regular fast food and such, but they were designed to be hangouts, with comfortable booths, an old fashioned ‘juke box’ loaded with the latest hits, and so on.

Lexie gave him a voluptuous grin. “Y’know, Red, if you start actually WINNING a few duels, I just might do that. But as it is, well, a girl is only as hot as those she hangs out with.” With a merry wave of her hand, Lexie went off to confront Donna Sachs before class.

Vic looked after Lexie sourly. The hell of it was, he agreed with her. Hanging with a hot chick like Lexie was just begging for some mojo’d up asshole to start something up in the parking lot. While the Dueling Circles might limit his moves, they kept him from getting seriously hurt, too. And while a street duel was much lower powered, they were deadly serious. As a rule of thumb, he, Long Tom and Big Ben avoided street duels. Not because they were scared, but because they weren’t dumb enough to get into fights that they knew they couldn’t win.

He had to start winning duels. Duels were the best way to build up your power. It didn’t matter how many goblins you captured, or how powerful your ‘Guardian Force’ was; in a duel, the real thing that mattered was your personal power. If you lost a duel, you still gained a little power, but it was only a fraction of what you’d gain if you won. Also, if you won, you got to claim a prize from the loser - magical energy, luck, or even the magical ‘matrixes’ that goblins use to create their magical effects.

Unfortunately, Vic was near the bottom of the Dueling Lists, and neither Tom nor Ben were even ON the list. But he had an idea to do something about that.

Vic was in the Afternoon Session, which meant that he took his magical classes in the afternoon, and the normal, mundane classes - Math, History, Civics and so on - in the morning. They were able to cram all that into less time than the mundane schools were and still be able to turn out some of the highest scores in the school system, because the Teachers routinely used Teaching spells, and the students routinely used various Learning Spells. Vic’s class were only High School Sophomores, but they were learning Information Field Theory, dissecting the interplay of Religious Doctrine in the political struggles between Central Authority and Feudal Privilege in the 17th Century, and examining the effects of ‘Virtual Town Halls’ on the downshift of political power from the Federal to the State and Local levels. Even slackers like Vic, Long Tom, and Big Ben already had sufficient educations that could have gotten them into the best colleges in the country - IF they weren’t Mages.

But things were different for Mages, and everyone knew it. By and large, people regarded magic as a cheat. Only 15% of the population were susceptible to the magical ‘infection’, and only a third of those were able to control their magic well enough to be considered Mages. And the Vast Mundane Majority may not have been having huge national nightmares about becoming subject to a Magical Elite, but people were definitely touchy on the subject. So, in order to ‘protect’ the majority, the Courts had interpreted already existing ‘Unfair Business Practice’ and ‘Unfair Advantage’ laws to effectively freeze Mages out of almost everything that didn’t already directly involve Magic. They argued that what non-magical restaurant could compete with a restaurant that used magical allure to keep customers coming, no matter how bad the food? And any whiff of Magic in Politics was the kiss of death for a movement, let alone a candidate - the voters hated the idea that they were being magically tricked into voting a certain way. Vickie couldn’t even help her brothers study, (not that Vic ever bothered), by using Learning spells on them, because it might ‘taint’ their test scores. Almost 40% of all Magic practiced was to make sure that no other Mages were pulling fast ones.

As Vic walked into Civics Class, Mrs. Berigarde gave him the cold fish eye. “Oh, it’s you.” Vic just smiled sourly at her - he wished that he could have given her some lip, like normal kids could after being dissed that way, but Merlin High teachers had very fast and effective - not to mention painful - ways of maintaining discipline in the classroom. “I suppose that you’ll be taking your usual seat at the back of the room?” she continued.

Vic sketched a salute at her and went to the back row. When Berigarde called the class to order, the students all cast their Learning spells. Every student had their own learning spell; Vic’s was a ‘listen with one ear and let if filter in, while I do something else’ spell. As Berigarde droned on about ‘Media Saturation’ and ‘Information Overload’, he carefully traced a Challenge Slip out of his Enchantment textbook. The Dueling Club had very strict challenging guidelines for duels, to keep the more powerful from taking unfair advantage of the average students. Among other things, Year and Ranking mattered as to whether a challenge would be accepted. And there was the matter of what was being wagered, as well - there were rules to keep the winners from demanding things that the losers couldn’t afford to lose. But these challenge slips were a way around the usual red tape. They were a variation on the Hex Slips, like the one that he’d slipped to Donna Sachs for Lexie. They were sort of a curse, and as such they had to be resolved as quickly as possible. But even this wasn’t foolproof - the Dueling Club had ways around these things, but Vic doubted that his mark would kick up a fuss - at least not until it was too late.

Vic had just finished filling out the forms properly when the half-hour class ended, and Mrs. Berigarde started assigning the homework. Berigarde watched him as he left the class, but didn’t say anything about him doing magic work in class, like she usually did. Odd.

Vic jaunted around the halls until he found Charlie Wannamaker. “Yo, Chuck!”

“Yo, Vic! You’re back!”

“That’s what they keep telling me. So, you got those comic books that I asked you for?”

“Yeah, I've still got ‘em, and you’re damn lucky that I do.”

“Hey, I've been, ah, ‘out of town’.” Chuck handed Vic the comics, and Vic started hastily flipping through them. “Right. Right. Right. Cool. Okay. Okay, not perfect, but definitely, it will do. And what about that ‘special order’?”

Chuck beamed and pulled a vacuum-sealed plastic wrapped copy of a comic book. “One perfectly counterfeited copy of the classic Southern Belle #24, the ‘Magnificent Chrysalis’ issue, copied directly from my brother’s collection.” Vic reverently took the forgery and paid Chuck off.

“So, what’s all the sudden interest? You gonna be pulling a Chelkiss on us?” Chuck indicated with a jerk of his head as Chelkiss walked by. Darryl Chelkiss was the kind of Comics Geek that made other comics fans embarrassed by their hobby. Not only was he the archetypal pudgy bespectacled nerd who only kept his acne under control with heavy application of magic, but he was walking through the halls ‘in costume’. While he was still technically in school uniform, he wore a copy of the cape that Dr. Strange © had, there was a green glowing ‘lantern’-shaped ring on his right index finger, he had a Batman © style utility belt around his commodious waist, and a gold metal visor, in the style of the X-Men’s © Cyclops © over his glasses. The only reason that he wasn’t mercilessly heckled in the hallways was that he was #12 in the Dueling Club’s rankings, and he was heavily favored to move up into the Top Ten. And the dorky looking accessories had a lot to do with it.

“Yes and No,” was all that Vic said. In a school for magic, the only place to keep a secret was inside your skull.

And it’s not always safe even there.

*****

Vic spent the next class carefully trimming panels out of the comics that he’d bought. In the pause before the next period, Long Tom came up to him. “What are you up to, Vic? Paper Dollies?”

“Tom, I’m ashamed for you!” Vic returned with an evil grin. “You should know better! Watch and learn, Junior.”

For once, Vic was the first one in the classroom. He still beat it to his usual seat in the rear, but he made sure that he could easily be seen from the doorway. He opened up the vacuum-sealed plastic sleeve, and deposited the counterfeit comic book on top of a small stack of comics. Then he idly started leafing through the latest issue of The Sizzling Southern Belle. For the articles, you understand.

Sure enough, the lure of the comic books practically dragged Chelkiss all the way from the door to the back of the classroom. “So, wha’cha got there, Vic?” Chelkiss asked ingenuously.

Vic ignored him, apparently engrossed in his comic.

Chelkiss spotted the coveted copy of Southern Belle, and you could see his eyes widen under the visor. Quietly, slowly, his hand crept to the famous issue where the classic character’s entire life changed so dramatically. His hand was a mere fraction of an inch from the cover, when he heard, “Don’t touch that.”

“I wasn’t going to touch it.”

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you, not to go around grabbing other people’s stuff?” Vic pointedly took the stack of comics and moved it to the shelf under his chair. Chelkiss stalked sullenly over to his usual chair near the front of the class.

Long Tom leaned over and whispered, “Okay, what was all THAT all about?”

Vic held up a finger. “The ball is still in play.”

When the class was over, Vic reached under his chair, and---

-- the ultra-desirable collectable comic book was gone. Vic grinned. “Good Boy. I knew that you had it in you, Chelkiss.”

As he and Vic walked to their next class, Long Tom asked, “Okay, NOW what?”

“Wait for it.”

They were halfway to Science class, when Chelkiss stormed up to them. “And WHAT is THIS?” He all but rammed the Challenge Slip up Vic’s nose.

“Well, I’m not that nearsighted, but I’d say that it was a Challenge Slip,” Vic returned, blandly.

“And WHY didn’t you just challenge me face-to-face, instead of slipping this into that bogus comic book?”

“Because I didn’t think that you’d have the guts to accept an open challenge.”

“WHAT?” Chelkiss hyperventilated. “Not only am I gonna accept, but I’m gonna whip your smartass butt so bad, that you’ll be a girl for the rest of your LIFE!” With that, Chelkiss tore up the challenge slip, turned and stalked off, his cape billowing out behind him.

“THAT was your big plan?” Tom asked incredulously. “Get one of the heaviest hitters in school pissed off and then get into a dueling ring with him?”

“Of course!” Vic breezed. “First, like you said, he’s pissed; he’s concentrating on beating me up, rather than on winning the duel. Second, he’s at a disadvantage - the crux of this duel is that he stole my property. And, naturally, being Chelkiss, he’d rather commit hara-kiri with a power tool than admit it, so he’s only making it worse for himself. Third, since it’s a Hex Challenge, it has to be taken care of ASAP, so it’ll be kicked up on the Challenge Lists to get it out of the way.”

“And why is getting this Duel out of the way fast so important?”

“I’ve noticed Welles and his buddies keeping their eyes on me. I think they’re gonna pull something, and I wanna have something of Chelkiss’ on my side when they do it. And lastly-” He carefully picked up the shreds of the Challenge Slip, “-he’s so angry that he never bothered to check what the wager was.”

*****

In Math class, which was the only one of the mundane classes that Vic actually had to pay attention in, the teacher was handing out a worksheet. As was usual, she gave a stack of them to the kid in the front row, who took the one on the top and handed it back. You know the drill. By the time that it got to Vic in the back row, somehow someone had stuck a Challenge Slip to the back of the very last page.

Fnark.

There was no way that he could get out of Math class and foist it off onto someone else. Maybe he could complain to the Dueling Club leadership that this guy was exploiting the Duels to take advantage of a much weaker player. But passing Hex Slips and Challenge slips to each other was regarded as a form of training. There were people out in the Real World who were passing around things a lot nastier than 'Double Talk’ spells, and learning how to avoid such things was something that you just couldn’t learn in a classroom. But, there were rules to the Duels, so that people wouldn’t clutter up the waiting lists with predatory challenges. Which, admittedly, was exactly what he was doing with Chelkiss. But Chelkiss was almost in the Top Ten, so no one would take that seriously, even if Chelkiss’ ego would let him complain. But if this guy was ranked high enough... He checked the particulars on the slip. Doug Hammersmith... Student ID number... Sophomore... Club Ranking--- 56. Shit, Hammersmith was a mid-range duelist, there was no way that he could weasel his way out of it.

*****

Vic headed out to the Inner Courtyard as soon as the Lunch Break started. It was best to Duel on an empty stomach. At the center of the courtyard inside the pentagonal building was a statue of Merlin - or at least, a sculptor’s idea of what Merlin looked like, staff in hand, the other hand raised in a cryptic gesture, an owl on his shoulder and wolf at his feet. Not that anyone really knew what the real Merhyddin looked like, or if he even really existed. Arranged around the base of the statue were the five Dueling Rings.

The dueling rings were a set of magical diagrams that the students used to have their duels, without the magical effects slipping out and endangering anyone. There were five of them, arranged around Merlin’s statue. They were set there so that they could tap into the magical energy that the school’s design concentrated in toward Merlin’s statue. Besides allowing the duelers to use the freer energy, there were enchantments that softened the ‘blow’ of the magic casts. While the duelists could wail at each other and render each other unconscious, no real lasting physical damage was done. Thus relieving the school of liability from lawsuit, while still letting the students hone their skills. The circles were about ten feet in diameter. The outer ring was a Zodiac circle, and the inner ring was the eight permutations of Tao. The circle was quartered along a North- West- South- East axis, and separated into a Tao design.

But the most important thing was that they were almost always booked way ahead. People were always challenging each other over one thing or another, mostly as an excuse to get in dueling practice. Still, the excuses could get pretty involved. Vic walked up to Joy Michelson, the Dueling Club president. “Yo, Michelson! Where are Chelkiss and I in the lineup?”

The perky blonde looked up from her PDA. “You’re fighting Chelkiss, O’Bryan? How did that happen?”

“Hex Slip.”

She looked at him. “Chelkiss is ranked number 12 - if you don’t wanna go through with this, I can slap him on the wrist and disallow the challenge without any penalty to you.”

“Ah, thanks, but no thanks. Chelkiss didn’t hex me, I hexed HIM. So, did it get registered?”

“YOU hexed one of the toughest duelists at this school? Why?”

“Would you believe that I suddenly understood what this school was trying to teach, and that I’m trying to realize my full potential?”

“No.”

“Would you believe that I was suddenly overcome by a driving urge to show that I really had the stuff to be a champion duelist?”

“No.”

“Would you believe that I’m trying to show a really cute girl that I’m a guy that should be taken seriously, so she’ll date me?”

“No.”

“Would you believe that I’m trying to pull an underhanded stunt and make a quick score?” Vic muttered, rather deflated.

“Now, THAT I believe!” Joyce checked him off on her PDA. “But, since you’re going up against someone ranked at least a hundred places higher than you, it should be educational - or at least entertaining - so I’ll allow it. Okay, you and Chelkiss are slot three on Circle B. As challenger, you enter from the West.”

Vic got in line for the West entrance to Circle B. The first duel ate up a lot of his lunch break, because it was a couple of Top Twenty types showing off, fighting to a knockout. When the loser was hauled out of the circle, even the winner was looking ragged. The second duel wasn’t as bad - it was a friendly duel between a couple of girls giving their GFs a workout; no real wager, and it was only to the first pin. The Guardian Forces, or ‘GFs’, were the greater spirits behind the familiars, which give Mages the raw power to perform the really kickass effects.

The girls walked out of the circle together chatting gaily. Even their familiars looked better for a good tussle. Vic walked out onto the white dot in the black half of the Tao design, and Chelkiss walked onto the black dot across from him. Slyboots waited outside the ring for Vic, and Chelkiss’ familiar, a particularly stupid looking blue monkey wearing a yellow shirt and purple cape, waited on the other side.

Aaron Tran, Circle B’s duel ref, said, “You guys ready?”

“Just a sec.” Vic took off his school blazer and tie and threw them to Big Ben, who was watching along with Long Tom at the sidelines. “Ready!”

Chelkiss was clipping a pair of golden wing things to his heels. That done, he pulled a pair of long red gloves on his hands, making sure that the ‘Green Lantern’ ring was still over the cloth, and slipped a golden domino mask over his glasses. He finished by reaching into his utility belt and pulling out a disk the size of a CD and a small hammer. “Ready!”

Aaron tapped his staff of authority three times on the circle and snapped, “Begin!”

As was part of the ritual, both Vic and Chelkiss went through their ‘Totemic Posturing’. While their familiars were physically outside the circle, and unable to directly help, the Guardian Forces still resided inside them. Large archetypal images of the GFs flared up beside them. Behind Vic, a huge fox redolent of the mystery and danger of the night coiled and bared fangs of lightning. Vic held up both hands, full of Ofudas glowing with power. Ofudas are spell slips, similar to the Hex Slips, but unlike the hex slips, they didn’t need to be accepted by a person to work. The downside was, that while a Hex slip would work, an Ofuda only might work, depending on the target’s power and concentration.

Behind Chelkiss, an enormous purple gorilla reared up, arms held high, and roared. The domino mask on Chelkiss’ face became a full golden Greek helmet. The clasp on his cape suddenly opened and an uncanny eye blinked. The hammer trinket in his right hand became a large squarish gray metal hammer that crackled with lightning. The disk in his off hand became a large round shield with a white star on a blue disk as the boss, surrounded by concentric circles of red-white-red. The long red gloves grew black spider webs along them, and the ring glowed with green power. The two golden wings clipped to his ankles became a pair of yellow boots. Somehow, despite the patchwork superhero look, Chelkiss didn’t look quite so stupid anymore.

Chelkiss made the mistake of mimicking his GF’s roaring posture, which gave Vic the perfect opening. Vic picked the Ofuda with the Word of Mist written in the Low Script on it. The Word of Mist glittered in foxfire for a second, and then Vic appeared to explode in a cloud of smoke. Chelkiss thrust his right fist forward, a beam of green light erupting from the ‘power ring’. But the beam only scattered mist, making the smoke screen spread quicker. Chelkiss felt a *ping!* as someone flicked a finger against the back of his helmet. Chelkiss spun around, sending another green beam lancing at the wards of the circle.

“In the brightest day, in the darkest night...” Chelkiss spun around sending blast after blast into the mist, trying to keep Vic from sneaking up behind him, as a beam of light from the amulet pierced the mists, searching for Vic. Too late - Vic was already right behind him, and moved with him. As Chelkiss blasted at nothing, Vic pulled two of the clippings that he’d cut out of the comic books from the ‘fans’ of Ofudas. One was a frontal head-shot of DC’s Dr Fate©, and the other one was of Marvel’s competing super-mage, Dr Strange©, in rather dire straights. He pulled out a yellow marker and marked over the eyeslits of Dr Fate’s helmet. He attached the clipping to an Ofuda with the Word of Blindness written on it. Then he attached the clipping with Dr Strange to an Ofuda with the Word of Binding on it. That done, he tapped Chelkiss on the shoulder.

Chelkiss spun around again, but Vic stepped inside his reach and slapped the Ofuda squarely on Chelkiss’ brow. Immediately, the eye slits in his own helmet sealed over. “What the fuck?”

As Chelkiss paused to wrap his brain around it, Vic slapped the other Ofuda on his shoulder. Chelkiss’ cloak wrapped itself around him, snaring him as Dr. Strange’s cape did in the clipping.

Vic moved away from Chelkiss as he struggled, and moved to behind and just to the side of him. As Chelkiss wriggled, Vic took his yellow marker and attuned it to his energies.

It occurred to Vic that Chelkiss might suspect something if he didn’t take advantage of this golden opportunity. So, he threw a couple of Battlestars at Chelkiss’ helmet.

Finally, Chelkiss got it together and cut himself out of his own cloak with energy lances from his power ring. As Chelkiss’ right hand came out of the shreds of the cloak and rose up to take the blindered helmet off, Vic pointed the marker at the power ring, and sent out a spray of yellow paint that totally covered the entire hand - and ring.

Chelkiss managed to get the helmet off, looked at it and threw it to the ground with a curse. Hearing Vic snicker, Chelkiss spun around again and jabbed his fist out. And saw his paint smeared hand. As Chelkiss reacted, Vic threw an Ofuda with the Word of Wind on it at him, sending Chelkiss flying up into the air. Chelkiss came down with a resounding *thud!*, and as he was recovering, Vic darted out of the mist, grabbed the ‘Eye of Aggamotto’ from the shreds of his cloak and threw it out of the circle. Then, Vic retreated into the mists.

“Fucking smartass...” Chelkiss snarled as he touched the palms of his hands with his middle fingers, sending sprays of a webbing-like adhesive out into the mist.

“Bad Move, Darryl,” Vic snickered, and from where he snickered a barrage of Battlestars came at the other boy.

Chelkiss zipped out of the path to the chain of strikes. Then he realized that he had a way of dealing with the mist. “Okay, you think you’re clever? Let’s see you deal with THIS!” Chelkiss tucked his head behind his shield, and concentrated on running as fast as he could. Either he’d run smack into the smartass hiding in the mist, or he’d dispel the mist and have a clear shot at the bastard. After all, it was only a ten-foot radius circle. He got up some speed, but then something threw him to the ground. Looking back to where he’d been thrown, he spotted his boots stuck to a glob of webbing. As he reeled, yet another Ofuda hit him, this one with a clipping of Spiderman’s hands touching the triggers of his web-shooters, and a balloon saying “Nuts! They’re Jammed!” And there was a ‘fthpt’ sound from his gloves that echoed the sound effect in the panel.

Okay, Chelkiss thought to himself, that didn’t work, but clearing this circle is still a good idea. He got to his feet and pulled the hammer from his belt. Bracing himself, he whirled the hammer around, until he stirred up a stiff breeze that cleared the circle of the mist. As the mist cleared, Chelkiss caught sight of a crouched figure, and let the hammer fly. The hammer hit the two-dimensional figure square in the chest, and totally shredded it.

Then he felt a tap on his shoulder again. “Excuse me, but are you by any chance, the Mighty Thor ©?”

“No, of course not! What-”

Vic pulled to the side. “Behind You!”

Chelkiss turned just in time to see the hammer as it smacked him square in the chest. The force of the blow sent him back to the very edge of the circle’s wards, and the hammer landed on top of him. Chelkiss grunted and strained, but he couldn’t budge the hammer that was crushing his chest. “What...the...Hell...did...you...do?”

Vic kneeled down by Chelkiss. “Oh, me? I didn’t do anything - YOU did. You magicked up that hammer so that it’s Mjolnir, the Mighty Thor’s hammer. AND, as anyone who’s read comic books - or actual Norse mythology - can tell you, Mjolnir has Odin’s blessing that only Thor can lift it. And you just finished stating flat out that you are NOT the Mighty Thor©. Y’can’t have it both ways, Chelkiss...”

“Can’t...lift it. Can’t...breathe...” Chelkiss gasped.

“Well,” Vic said in the Voice of Extreme Reason, “you could always admit defeat. The second that you tap out, the magic stops.”

“Up yours, Loser!” Chelkiss snarled. He focused his will, and the hammer diminished to its original trinket state.

Before Chelkiss could get up, Vic plucked the trinket from his chest and threw it out of the ring. Chelkiss hurried to his feet. “Okay,” Chelkiss said, breathing heavily, “you’re good. A lot better than I expected...but I have,” he reached for his utility belt-

-Which Vic was holding up. “I, ah, took the liberty of relieving you of it while you were concentrating on breathing.” With a grin, Vic tossed it out of the ring as well. “MAN, I hope someone is keeping tabs on those things.”

Vic produced another pair of fans of ofudas with a flourish. He looked at Chelkiss. “Y’know, Chelkiss, your real weakness as a duelist is that you rely too heavily on tools. The only tool you've got left is that ‘Captain America©’ shield. I admit, it’s a damn GOOD tool. But, it can only block attacks from one direction at a time - IF you manage to block it. And I've got a LOT of ofudas here. Why don’t you save me some time, and yourself some embarrassment and pain, and just give up?”

“Give up?” Chelkiss snarled.

“Y’know, Darryl, you’re taking this WAY too personal.”

“Why should I give up?” Chelkiss yelped. “Tools? You think I need TOOLS? I don’t even need this shield! I was going easy on you! Why should I rely on TOOLS, when I have my Ace in the hole?” He clutched at his chest, pulling apart his blazer, shirt and tie to reveal under all that a blue undershirt with a red ‘S’ in a pentagonal shield.

“The Original! The Greatest! The Unsurpassed! The most POWERFUL superhero of them all! Now feel my POWER!” The red ‘S’ glowed with magical power and Chelkiss began to grow larger and more muscular. His round face got longer and more regular, and his jaw gained a heroic definition. His curly brown hair became blue-black and a curling lock formed over his forehead. He almost outgrew his clothing, which just barely kept up with his expanding chest. “WELL? Take your best shot!” he shouted in a deep, commanding voice.

As Chelkiss was going through his metamorphosis, Vic calmly attached yet another clipping to the Ofuda that he’d made with Lamia’s blood, at Mr. Quinton’s place. “Okay, Darryl, if you insist.” He tossed the Ofuda at Chelkiss’ feet. The Ofuda twisted and folded itself into the form of a large, featureless purple humanoid with green trunks. “Well? Let’s see how you do against that.”

Chelkiss aimed his heat vision at the paper figure, but it didn’t catch on flame. Instead, it advanced on him. He threw a punch that should have shredded it, but it just bounced off. Then he noticed that he was getting tired. But he had magical energy flowing through his entire body - there was no way that he should be feeling tired! Then it hit him - this figure was somehow draining all of his super power out of him!

Vic saw the realization cross Chelkiss’ face. “Oh, Chelkiss?” he spoke up, “Original? Yep. Greatest? Definitely! Unsurpassed? Iffy. But most powerful? Hardly. Meet ‘The Parasite ©’, one of Superman’s deadliest enemies. As you’ve probably realized, he has the ability to absorb all kinds of energy thrown at him. He particularly likes to slurp up Superman’s power.” The ‘Parasite’ conjuration grabbed Chelkiss and got him in a headlock. “But, I guess that you’ve figured that one out by now.”

As he felt more and more of his magical power drain out of him, a desperate thought occurred to Chelkiss. The conjuration might be based on a pattern that was very effective against him, but it was still only a conjuration. With a croak, he uttered the Word of Dispelling in the High Speech - a very dangerous thing to do, as he didn’t have anything like a mastery of the High Speech. The purple conjuration shredded, freeing all the stored up magical power.

Chelkiss valiantly reached out for the raw magical power that hung in the air like livid smoke, but it was too late. Vic calmly reached into his pocket and produced an uncharged powerstone. As Chelkiss flayed about trying to gather up some of the free power, Vic matter of factly swept up the raw manna and bound it into the stone. “Damn nice of you, Chelkiss!”

Chelkiss gritted his teeth and focused entirely on getting up. He reached out into the ambient energy of the circle and drew it into himself. He used the ‘S’ on his chest as his matrix and forced raw magical power through his frame - which he hated doing, because it gave him acid indigestion like you wouldn’t believe. He climbed to his feet and trumpeted, “Well, any MORE tricks?”

“Don’t be ridiculous - OF COURSE I have more!” Vic waved two ofudas with clippings attached, one in each hand, and the papers metamorphosed into large chunks of glowing, transparent green crystal.

Pain swept over Chelkiss. “No! How-”

“Oh, Please! If you can be Superman, then there MUST be Kryptonite©! And if you’re Superman, and I’m holding some Kryptonite, then, well, your azz is grazz, Chazz!”

Chelkiss was on the ground, agonizing. “How - how did you know? You’d have had to prepare --- it --- beforehand ---”

“What? Like this is some big secret?” Vic asked incredulously. “You go around wearing that stupid blue shirt under a thin white shirt, and you expect no one to notice? Talk about Magical Thinking!”

Chelkiss didn’t answer - he’d passed out. Mrs. Roker, the faculty supervisor, tapped the staff of authority three times on the ring, ending the duel. Consensual Reality re-asserted itself, Chelkiss faded from a fallen (and rather green-tinged) paragon of power to an exhausted and flushed overweight boy, and the two chunks of astronomically impossible crystal dwindled to mere pieces of paper.

Mrs. Roker walked in and checked on Chelkiss. “You’ll live. You tried to win by absorbing energy from the Circle?” He nodded weakly. “Well, that explains it - it only made the ‘Kryptonite poisoning’ more real for your metabolism. Go sit down, and I wouldn’t accept any challenges for at least a week.”

“Excuse me?” Vic interjected. “First things first - the wager.”

“What are you talking about?” Chelkiss whined. “You got the energy that your Parasite thing drained from me. Isn’t that enough power for you?”

“No,” Vic explained reasonably, “that was a by-product of the duel, not the wager. The wager was for one of your matrixes.”

“My Matrixes?” Chelkiss hugged the bits and pieces that had been returned to him possessively. “I never agreed to anything like that!”

“Yes, you did.” Vic produced the Challenge slip, and though it had been restored, you could see the tears from when Chelkiss had ripped it apart. “You accepted this challenge, in front of a witness.” Vic indicated Long Tom. “And, it says right here - ‘Nature of Wager: Matrix for Matrix’. Now, do you admit accepting this challenge?”

Chelkiss nodded, though it looked like he’d rather be chewing glass. “So, which matrix do you want?”

Vic’s eyes sparkled with barely subdued greed. “That one - the shield.” He pointed at the tri-color disk in Chelkiss’ hand.

“The Shield? But --- that’s one of my BEST!”

“Well, SHUH!” Vic shot back, “Do you honestly think that I’d go through all of this for a third rate bit of work? Chelkiss, you are the BEST at Matrix-working; take it as a compliment!” Vic pulled out a blank amulet and held it out. Chelkiss reluctantly touched his disk to the amulet. The disk lost its red-white-and-blue, which passed over to the amulet. Vic gave a passing thought to altering the Matrix’s rather dorky appearance, maybe tweak it so that the protection wasn’t quite so limited. But no, as he’d said, Chelkiss was one of the best at Matrix-work; if he messed with the shield, he’d probably screw it up.

“Well!” Mrs. Roker broke in, “Now that the crasser aspects have been taken care of, I’d like to congratulate Mister O’Bryan on an excellent duel!” She turned to the other kids standing around, waiting their turns. “I want you all to remember this! This was a classic example of how a less powerful combatant can take down a more powerful opponent, using planning, preparation, and careful analysis! Victor studied his opponent carefully and saw not only his weakness and limitations, but ways that his strengths could be used against him! He took control of the situation at the very onset, and kept Mr. Chelkiss off balance throughout the fight. This is almost a textbook example of the adage that there’s no such thing as a perfect defense!”

Vic wondered why Roker was being so nice. Yeah, it was a good duel, but -

“As a matter of fact, I’m so impressed that besides the Ranking upgrade that you’d get for beating a much higher ranked opponent, I’m also adding on bonus points for ingenuity, planning, and excellent use of the Rules of Theme and Balance. With those bonus points, Mister O’Bryan, you come screaming out of the cellar, and well into the mainstream of competition!”

The mainstream of competition... In other words, well out of the ‘protected’ status that the losers in the cellar enjoyed. So, now he was fair game for anyone that wanted to take a crack at him. He’d planned to rise, but he wanted to take a few more carefully planned strikes before getting completely out of the cellar. Vic felt the dull thud of a dagger burying itself deeply in his back. He was in deep shit, if the teachers were ganging up on him.

Vic spotted Lexie on the sidelines giving him a cheer. He started to move out of the circle, when Aaron stopped him. “Hold on, we have another Hex challenge to resolve, remember? Might as well get it out of the way, while you’re still in the circle.”

“Hunh? But I just got through with a fight. I thought that I’d get some lunch and chill before the next match.” And soak in some victory, before he had to risk it all going up against Hammersmith.

“Sorry, that’s the way these things work - you got in early with a Hex challenge, so you gotta take care of the next one. Yo! Hammersmith! You here?”

“Yo!” came back over the crowd. Doug Hammersmith pushed his way through the line. Doug was a thin boy, with a long thin face and long floppy dirty blonde hair.

“Hey, Hammersmith!” Vic called, “What’s up? I mean, I hexed Chelkiss, lookin’ to work my way up the list, but what did I ever do to you?” Which was a legit question. While Vic knew Doug, mostly in passing in the halls, they only had a few classes together, and Vic couldn’t remember having ever crossed him.

“What did you ever do to me?” Hammersmith echoed, “Hey, if you can’t remember, then I’m not gonna tell you!”

“‘If you can’t remember, then I’m not gonna tell you’?” Vic hooted, “Doug, you been spendin’ a lot of time on the other side of the gender gap? That’s Chick-think!”

“Yeah, well, you should know - you spend most’a yer time in skirts these days!”

“Are saying that that makes me lame?” Vic cupped his hands and yelled out past the circle. “Hey! Everyone who changes Sex! Dougie here thinks you’re LAME!” Vic folded his arms across his chest and grinned at Hammersmith. “Well, I wish you well, on your future career as a lawn gnome.”

Aaron clapped his hands briskly. “Enough sparkling banter! We have people who want to duel lined up here!”

Hammersmith produced an odd looking gnarled stick from his jacket - probably had a ‘Deep Pockets’ spell on the jacket - and tapped it in his off hand. Vic noticed that the knob at the end of the stick resembled a balled up fist. And Vic also noticed that Hammersmith’s familiar - a Mandrake, a small gnarled humanoid that looked like a cartoon tree with legs and a full head of leafy ‘hair’ that cascaded down its back - had one arm that was much smaller than the other. While it looked like the Mandrake wasn’t in pain and growing a fully functional arm back, it sort of queased Vic out that anyone could dismember their own Familiar like that.

Which was probably the whole idea.

The familiars did their ‘Totemic Posturing’ bit. The mandrake grew into the Great Granddaddy of all Oaks, and was still damn impressive, even without the usual screams or roars.

Still, the Great Oak gave Vic more than a few problems. After Chelkiss, he’d expected to face off against Dylan Welles, or his buddy Jase Constantine. Welles had a Griffin familiar and Constantine had a large Raven; one Fire & Air biased elementally, the other Air biased. Most of the effects that he had prepared were Water based, and he was so busy getting ready for Chelkiss, that he hadn’t had time to prep for Hammersmith. And even if he had, he hadn’t known about the mandrake. Mandrakes were the next best things to Wood elementals. Throwing Water biased effects at a Wood-attuned elemental would have been like throwing gasoline on a Fire elemental.

Somehow, Vic suspected that Hammersmith hadn’t been chosen by drawing names out of a hat.

Vic charged up his Ofudas and his Shield matrix. It looked like he’d have to wing it. And winging it sucked.

He flourished an Ofuda with the Word of Mist written on it, and Hammersmith tensed. But, Vic didn’t disappear in a bank of mist. Rather, he threw the slip right at Hammersmith, who disappeared in a bank of mist that he couldn’t control.

Hammersmith waved his ‘wand’, which held out a flat hand, clearing the air with a fan like motion. When the mist cleared, Hammersmith found himself surrounded. Glancing around, he saw that there were twelve identical figures in gray plate armor, wearing green doublets, capes and hoods, and the armor all had expressive metallic masks. While he’d left comic books behind him years ago, Doug recognized Marvel’s Dr. Doom ©, the arch-nemesis of the Fantastic Four ©.  Besides the usual mad scientist garbage, Dr Doom was famous for using android duplicates of him to confuse his enemies. “Using up your leftover Ofudas, O’Bryan?”

The twelve ‘Doctors Doom’ said nothing, but held up their gauntlets as one. Hammersmith tensed, and waited. Then as the twelve ‘supervillains’ fired at the same time, he leapt up, dodging the blasts. The conjurations were perfectly spaced out, as the magical equation outweighed the tactical considerations, so they blasted each other. Eleven of them disappeared, but one of them managed to deflect the blast with a red-white-and-blue shield.

Still protected by his ‘Dr Doom’ armor, Vic threw another Ofuda at the space where Hammersmith would land. The characters flared with silvery light, and a large patch of ice formed. Hammersmith landed awkwardly and slipped. As Hammersmith scrambled to regain his feet, Vic produced two more Ofudas and threw one. Doug was immediately engulfed in a wave of water, which was frozen solid by the second Ofuda, trapping him inside.

There was a moment of eerie silence, as Hammersmith dealt with the trap that Vic had set for him. As he waited for Hammersmith’s move, Vic prepared his countermove. He linked two Fire-Restraining Ofudas that he’d prepared for Welles. Now, when Hammersmith broke out of the ice block with a fire effect, these restraints would confine the fire and send it back at him, using his own magic against him. And when he summoned up some water to defeat his own fire, Vic would throw another Deep Freeze Ofuda, trapping him again. Which would give Vic time to figure out what Doug would do then, so that he could anticipate him again. That was the way that you won duels.

But instead of melting, the ice block began to crack, and then it exploded apart, broken free by the force of a whirling cloud of leaves. That was a very tricky spell to pull off - he must have had the makings for that particular spell already prepped. The smell of a set-up was getting pretty thick. The leaves gathered a coating of ice around them and flew at Vic like a flock of razor-sharp bats.

But Hammersmith was playing right into Vic’s hands. The leaves and ice were both made of Glamour, and Wizardry, the manipulation of glamour, was his strong suit. He reached out with his will, grabbed the glamour under the leaf-pattern, and turned it to his will. In order to take control of the ‘leaves’, he’d have to impose a new pattern, a new image on the glamour. But that was fine with Vic - that meant that he would have to impart a little more power to the attack, making it even stronger than before. And he’d barely have to tap into his own reserves to do it.

Since they looked like bats, he merged them all into one particularly nasty bat, and sent it back screaming at Hammersmith.

Hammersmith, it seemed, knew this ploy too. He reached out and took the bat by its head just as it reached him. There was a flickering, and the bat dwindled into a lacy fan in Hammersmith’s hand. Hammersmith coyly fanned himself with it and then pointed it back at Vic. With a flick of his hand, Hammersmith used the fan to blow a furious wind at Vic.

But then, that’s the problem with this gambit - each mage takes control of the magic, adds a little to it, and sends it back at their opponent, who does the same. The power grows and grows with each transformation, which MUST be different from the ones before, until one of the duelists misses their catch, or can’t think of a new form suggested by the previous one, or just can’t control it, and takes it full in the face. Once the volley begins, it’s only a matter of time before one of the duelists gets creamed; and you can never really be all that certain that it won’t be you.

On the other hand, it looks really cool.

Vic spun with the wind, and gathered it up into a whirlwind. And once he had it under control, he sent it howling at Hammersmith-

-Who took it by the tail and wove it into a full-fledged thunderstorm. The storm poured and thundered on Vic, who took it in his hands, wrung it into a single glaring bolt of lightning, and sent it at Hammersmith.

Who caught the lightning in his bare hands and twisted it into a flaming serpent that coiled around Vic, smelting his ‘Dr Doom’ armor. Vic took advantage of the pause to bend the firesnake to his will. Remembering his initial ploy, he added batwings, then horns, then massive claws. Finally, Vic threw a dragon at Hammersmith.

Hammersmith waited, poised for the dragon, and Vic smiled. C’mon, top a freaking dragon, asshole! Hammersmith held up his ‘wand’, which had a glowing purple stone clutched in its ‘hand’.

A powerstone, Vic realized, a moderately charged power stone. Was Hammersmith actually going to try and absorb the intense power of the dragon into his powerstone? That couldn’t NOT utterly disrupt the power matrix of his powerstone!

Hammersmith blocked the dragon with the wand, and took the raw power into the stone-

-and Vic’s powerstone exploded.

But how? How could Hammersmith shunt that much power into Vic’s powerstone through his? It wasn’t possible! Not unless-

-unless it wasn’t Hammersmith’s powerstone. It was Chelkiss’. The powerstone was attuned to Chelkiss’ magical energy, which was stored in Vic’s stone, and this link acted as a conduit to cram enough power to blow Vic out of the water. Hammersmith must have borrowed the powerstone from Chelkiss as Vic was dealing with Roker’s atypical praise. Normally, a Mage would rather cut off an arm than let another Mage his use powerstone, but under the circumstances, Chelkiss probably jumped at the opportunity.

Vic managed to pull himself together enough to sweep up the power hanging in the air. And as he stored it directly within himself, he wondered why Hammersmith wasn’t gobbling up as much as he could too. Or why he wasn’t taking advantage of Vic’s mistake. Then it occurred to him, that he was doing exactly what Hammersmith wanted, if Hammersmith was doing this for that bitch Vickie’s buddies. The reason that he’d stored the energy that he’d leeched off Chelkiss in his powerstone, as well a bunch his own magical energy, was that he went into this fight knowing that there was a good chance that he might lose.

The real issue wasn’t whether he’d win or lose this duel - it was whether he’d walk out of this ring with a Y chromosome or not. His transformation into a girl was caused by the backlash of expending magical energy, being beaten and then having more taken from him. Backlash happens in a lot of different ways - duels, accidents, side effects of magics, curses and so on - and it has a lot of different effects. The way that it affected him was to turn him into his alleged ‘better’ half. But Backlash was sort of like water - the more magical energy that you had inside you, the bigger the ‘wave’ caused by the backlash. His plan was to have as much energy outside of him, but available to him for the fight, as possible. With as little in his personal reservoir as possible, any backlash would have less to resonate through, and the ‘wave’ would be proportionately smaller and less effective. That way, even if he lost, he’d still walk out of the ring as a guy. But now, his personal reservoir was brimming, and the ‘wave’ from the backlash would be huge-

-IF he lost.

Well, then, he’d better damn well NOT lose, right?

He could tell that Hammersmith had had this fight taped from the get-go, like he’d had the fight with Chelkiss. So, it was time to send Dougie a real curve ball.

Vic flashed violet power, screamed shrilly, and fell to the ground. His body flickered in a glittering snowstorm of mana, which faded, leaving a smaller, more delicate form. The feminine form wavered, stunned, silver-gilt hair waving, and obscuring all facial features.

Doug wavered and stepped forward. “Vickie?”

Vic dropped the illusion with a triumphant “Psyche!”, and threw everything that he could into a vicious Witch Bolt. The Bolt caught Hammersmith square in the middle, and sent him and his ‘wand’ flying in different directions.

The ‘wand’ had barely stopped clattering on the ring surface, but Vic was on it like a hungry dog on a bone. He hefted it, and was just beginning to figure out what to do with it, when he suddenly realized that he’d been egregiously had. Tendrils of vine snaked out and wrapped him up in a cocoon. The tendrils bound him so tightly that it was all that he could do to breathe; marshalling his magic was out of the question. After a bit he heard a muffled voice say something about a ’Referee Call of Submission’. Vic tried desperately to say something to stop it, but it was too late.

There were three taps, and the magic stopped. The tendrils fell away, and Mrs. Roker was standing there with the smuggest look on her face. “Nice try, Mister O’Bryan. I hope to see more of that same excellent effort in your future matches. While you will be going down a few places in the ranking, I think that you deserve a few bonus points for originality in the use of that multiple decoy, and for your performance in that Spell Volley. Those bonuses should keep you well out of the basement, at least for a while.”

Shit. And this was supposed to be his lucky day. Well, the Sorcery teacher kept harping on about how Luck wasn’t supposed to be a match for skill, strategy and preparation - they just never said anything about being bushwhacked.

Hammersmith held up his wand, which was holding a powerstone - his own this time, most likely. “Hold it a minute!”

“What is it, Mr. O’Bryan?” Roker asked.

Vic glared at Hammersmith. “You owe me at least this much - howcum you hexed me? I admit that I hexed Chelkiss for his matrix, but what did _I_ ever do to piss you off?”

Hammersmith smirked, “Let’s just say that I have my reasons, and leave it at that.”

With that, he pointed the wand at Vic, and sparkles of foxfire emerged from every inch of his skin. The foxfire wafted off in glittering streams and flowed into the powerstone, which flared with purple power. Inside him, Vic felt the reservoir of magical power react to being depleted, as it had so many times before. But the ‘wave’ was so much larger than usual! It rose up and washed over him, and-

-Vic’s body flickered again in a flurry of mana, and there was a strange distortion of perspective, as if a camera were pulling in and out for select shots of the transformation. Trails of foxfire wrapped themselves around Vic, picking him up and spinning him about, first making him smaller and slenderer overall. A glowing fox-mask materialized on his face and then blended into his features, turning them long, angular, regal and rather elven looking, with large shut eyes over killer cheekbones, a wide expressive mouth with a full lower lip and a pointed chin. His neck lengthened and became more graceful and swanlike. Under his shirt, a bulging emerged at his chest, and the seat of his trousers suddenly became way too tight. The glittering glamour finished off by charging his hair, so that it was no longer bright red, short and curly, but silver-gilt blonde, and cascaded down past his shoulders to the small of his back. Suddenly the foxfire set Vic down, and it was complete - he was no longer a he, but a she. He was no longer a rather good looking young roughneck, but a lovely elegant girl of the same age. She shook her head and opened her doe shaped gray eyes. She could have posed for a portrait of a faerie princess coming out of a magic sleep. She held up her hands and started to focus. She raised her fists high and yelled in a clear soprano trumpet, “I’M BACK!”

As if on cue, two girls burst out of the crowd and into the ring. The taller one, with long black hair done up in a high ponytail, grabbed Vickie and began to steer her through the crowd. The other one, the foxy African-American with the straight shoulder length hair in a modified ‘Cleopatra’ cut, had Vic’s jacket under her arm, and took Vickie’s other side while speaking intently into her cell phone. "The Eagle has landed. Departing right now. ETA three to four minutes. Good News, she’s having a good hair day.”

Together they bustled Vickie out of the Dueling area, through of the center courtyard and into the school building. “Hey, guys!” Vickie said, “I’m cool! I can walk myself to the locker room!”

But Cassie was way too into her ‘Secret Service Bodyguard’ fantasy. “Can’t risk pictures of you looking like this.”

“Wouldn’t an anti-photograph amulet do the job?”

“Yeah, but where’s the fun in that?”

“Well, at least slow down a little! I’m about to lose my shoes!”

“With those shoes? We’re doing you a favor.”

Cassie and Yasmin steered Vickie into the girl’s locker room, where Trixie and Frankie were waiting with a girl’s uniform ready. As they stripped her out of her boy clothes, Vickie said, “What is this, are you competing for a quick-change record?”

Frankie looked up from helping get the socks, “Hey, it took you fifteen freaking minutes to get through with all that duel idiocy! We only have an hour for lunch!”

“So what? I’ve fought duels at lunchtime before!”

“Yeah, but you didn’t have a doctor’s appointment then!”

Sheba, Cassie’s sphinx familiar, jumped on Cassie’s shoulder. Cassie was about the size and shape of a sleek black cat with white, black-tipped wings, the head and face of a young Nubian girl and a set of (proportionately) impressive breasts that she kept covered (very much under protest) by a halter. She glared at Vickie. “The Rose of the Sea sings sweet songs to the sound of the surf!”

Vickie looked at Sheba. “Hanh?”

Cassie let out an exasperated sigh. “Dammit, Sheeb, why can’t you talk English?”

Sheba gave her a pussycat grin. “It’s even worse in Swahili!”

Trixie paused, screwed up her face and said, “I THINK that by ‘surf’, Sheba means the ‘wave’ phenomenon of backlash, and the Rose is a classic symbol of the soul, so-”

Cassie cut Trixie off. “Don’t encourage her!” Then she turned to Vickie. “We got Miss Firth to take a look at you. I think that if we get a better idea of how the backlash is affecting you, we’ll be able to figure out how long you’re gonna be with us this time, and maybe get a few clues as to how to make this permanent!”

As Vickie stepped into her skirt, she said, “Okay, I can see how that’s a good idea, but-”

“Yaz!” Cassie snapped, “Go hold us a place in line. They’re having chocolate fudge cake today - use all means necessary to hold pieces for us!

The tall ponytailed Hispanic snapped to attention, and sketched a salute. “Roger that!” She left as quickly as her skirt would let her.

Then Cassie said to Trixie, “Quick, snag us one of the picnic tables in the sun, while there’s still time.”

“Not to worry, Cass,” Trixie shot back, “I set Dolby on that. And who’s gonna cross a hydra-headed Naga that’s decided to sun itself on a table?”

“Let’s see: ‘Deliver Us From’ Eva, Jawbreaker Johnstone, Litigious Lynn-” Cassie counted off on her fingers.

“DOLBY!” Trixie blurted out, and scrambled to rescue her beloved familiar.

Frankie and Cassie hurried Vickie up to Miss Firth’s office on the Second floor. “What’s the RUSH?” Vickie complained as she was hustled along.

“The sooner we get you to Miss Firth,” Cassie explained, “the more accurate her data. Frankie’s for contrast, and I’m the control.”

Miss Firth was a rather tweedy Englishwoman who taught Psychic Self-Defense. She welcomed Vickie into her knick-knack-laden office, and immediately set a silver tuning fork at various points on Vickie’s body. “So, you’ve been lasting longer and longer on your backlash metamorphosis? How long was your last period?”

“Period? I haven’t been a girl long enough at any one time to have a period.”

“Lucky Duck,” Cassie muttered.

“No, I meant how long did you last like this, before you changed back?”

“I figure Nine Days and at least 8 Hours.”

“You sound so sure,” Miss Firth said as she placed a clear stone against Vickie’s sternum.

“We both keep records that are as accurate as we can. So far, we can’t find any astrological correlation, either by the Arabic, Chinese OR Mayan systems.”

“‘We’?” Miss Firth asked, “Is one of your family also a Mage?”

“No, by ‘we’ I mean my Male persona and myself.”

Firth’s eyebrows shot up. “Have you talked to Mr. Levi, the school’s counselor about this?”

Vickie gave her a weary expression. “Yes, and he checked for multiple distinct personalities and possible possession. He says that I have only one personality, but he says that my Anima and Animus are out of synch. And, he says that my Anima is overdeveloped, but it hasn’t tried to secede from the union and form its own country.”

“So?” Cassie asked, “Why secede? March on Washington and TAKE over! Send that carpet-bagging bozo Vic into permanent exile!”

“Do you even know what a carpetbagger IS?” Vickie asked.

“Someone with atrocious taste in purses?” Cassie shot back. Sheba clambered up on her shoulder and was about to say something when Cassie shushed her. “No, you don’t! Don’t you dare step on my line!”

Slyboots flowed up into Vickie’s lap. *What a waste of lunch time! Vickie is just another part of Victor.* Boots curled up, her tail over her nose. *A part with a very soft lap. Why does one end of the snake try to bite the other?*

Miss Firth sighed and said, “All that I can tell you is that the feedback does seem to be feeding energy into your Anima pattern. Have you noticed any irregularities in your focus of magics, in your two phases?”

Vickie paused, “Well, I have noticed that I’m a lot better at Divination - especially the Telepathy part, but not so much the Psychokinesis part - which Vic sucks at. And, while Vic is pretty good at Wizardry, he doesn’t seem to be able to channel that much raw power. Me?” Vickie held up her hands, and two blazing bonfires of silver-blue flame erupted in her hands, brightly lighting the room. Then, with a negligent gesture, the twin infernos were gone.

Miss Firth cocked an eyebrow. “Quite impressive! Normally, dismissing that much Glamour would take much more effort.”

Frankie made an impatient noise. “Oh, Please! Like this is some big mystery! Vickie has her act together, and Vic doesn’t, it’s as simple as that! Vickie knows how to pull it together, and Vic couldn’t pull it together with six hands and a drum of superglue!”

Miss Firth looked at Frankie. “Are you saying that the ‘Victor’ side of the personality has to work harder to achieve the same level of effect?”

“No,” Frankie said, her hazel eyes impatient, “I’m saying that ‘Victor’ has to work twice as hard to do half as much! He’s a Screw-Up! A Goof-Off! A Slacker! And, he only thinks about himself! But my girl Vickie, she KNOWS how it’s done!” The Eurasian girl gave Vickie a thumbs up.

Firth rolled her eyes heavenward, mulling it over. “Well, it COULD be that, as you said, the ‘Vickie’ aspect of her personality has made a comprehensive leap, probably subconsciously, that the ‘Victor’ part, for some reason hasn’t. That ‘Oh, THAT’S what they were talking about’ realization that you get when you suddenly get the whole gist of something. But why? From what you tell me, ‘Vickie’ benefits from ‘Victor’s’ efforts, so why not the reverse?”

“So,” Cassie cut in sourly, “what you’re saying is that you don’t know why Vic is such a loser. Okay, any ideas as to how long we’re gonna have her around THIS time?”

Firth sighed. “It isn’t that simple. I THINK that the reason why her female phases are lasting longer is that the backlash energy is interfacing with her Anima pattern, energizing and manifesting it. The Anima pattern is also acting like a dam, keeping the backlash energy in check. So, the ‘dam’ prevents the backlash from resolving itself in the time that it usually takes.”

Frankie chewed this over. “BUT, if the backlash energy is feeding into her Anima, it’s strengthening it too, right?”

Firth nodded. “A distinct possibility.”

“Then the longer she’s Vickie, the stronger, the more real Vickie is, and the better she is at keeping the backlash dammed up, right?”

“It’s not that simple, there are too many variables to consider.”

“But that’s the real meat of it, right?” Cassie pressed. Firth nodded.

*In THAT case, let’s go get some REAL meat!* Slyboots jumped off Vickie’s lap and ran to the door. Let’s go! We only have thirty-five minutes left for LUNCH!*

*****

As they strolled down the stairs at a more leisurely pace, Vickie asked Cassie, “And do I owe you for the expertly coordinated set-up that Vic ran into?”

Cassie draped an arm around Vickie’s neck. “What? You think that I’m gonna leave my heavy hitter in the lurch? How are we s’pozed to be the Five Fs-” Cassie saw herself as a sleek Magical Adventuress, like Xandra Fox on TV (in training), and she’d cast herself as the dynamic leader of a ‘super-team’, the ‘Five Fs’ (Five Fabulous Fighting Female Furies), “-if we don’t have all five?”

“By the way,” Frankie cut in, “isn’t ‘Female Fury’ redundant?”

“Besides,” Cassie breezed on, totally glossing over Frankie’s grammatically correct objection, “how are we supposed to venture forth and valiantly vanquish the venal vanguard of villainy, Vickie, if we don’t have your nose for trouble to sniff it out?”

Vickie shrugged. “It’s a knack.”

“A knack? It’s a genius!” Cassie enthused. “The way that you sniffed out ‘Deliver Us From Eva’s’ blackmail scheme was nothing short of magic!”

“Well, of course it was magic!” Vickie gave her friend an accusatory look. “This is a Magic School! What were you expecting, macramé?”

Cassie grinned back at her. Vickie was still in her ‘I’m the opposite of that sleazebag Vic’ stage, like she usually was, just after a transformation. The fact that Vic had pulled a particularly underhanded stunt just before, made it inevitable. But, with a few run-ins, Vickie would soon be back to her old self, and kicking ass.

Then a Backlash storm came roaring down the hall like a psychokinetic whirlwind. The three ducked into a hallway to wait for whoever was responsible to get it under control. Vickie looked at the chaos and sighed. “This is gonna take too long.” She put Slyboots on her shoulder, took her friends hands and jaunted them several steps, to the cafeteria door. Vickie and Cassie put Boots and Sheba on the floor and sent them to go find Trixie. While Familiars of all sorts were accepted at school - cooperating with their familiar is a large part of Mage’s training - Health Department regulations prohibited bringing animals of any sort into the Kitchen or Dining area. As a result most students ate on the tables outside, either in the large central courtyard, or in the large western open area outside the building.

Frankie held her hands to her mouth and forcibly kept her breakfast down, so that it wouldn’t spoil her lunch. “Gimme some warning before you do that!”

Like Vic, a lot of people had put off having lunch so that they could duel on an empty stomach, so the lines were thick with the late-comers. Yaz was close to the head of the line, and spotted them at the door. She gave them a wave, and the three girls walked her way.

“Good News!” Yaz chirped as they joined her in line, “They put the lime jello up first and then the chocolate fudge. If Murray the Mouth doesn’t pull another of his hog-fests, we’re in!

“What is THIS?” came from behind them. “It's bad enough that a True Samurai must be forced to give precedence to a shabby travesty pretending to be a woman, but to have three MORE force themselves ahead of decent, honorable students is more than I can bear!”

Vickie, Yaz, Frankie and Cassie looked behind themselves icily, at the boy glowering at them. He was the same height as Yaz, his dyed black hair was pulled back into a slightly curled pigtail, he was wearing the Kendo team practice uniform and he had a bokken - the wooden sword that some practitioners used as a weapon - resting on his shoulder. “Who you callin’ ‘Shabby’?” Yaz snarled.

“Who you calling ‘Travesty’?” Frankie spat.

“Who you calling ‘pretending’?” Cassie, who was a born, 24/7 girl and damned proud of it, asked icily.

“Enough!” he barked, flourishing his bokken, “I, Takahashi Rumiki, have had more than enough! Go to the back of the line! Or, better yet, leave this school entirely!” He punctuated this by lashing out with his bokken, pulling the old trick of stopping it a hair’s breadth from Yaz’s nose.

Yaz made a point of not flinching. That would only have encouraged him. “Up yours! I saved their place, fair and square!”

“And what’s this ‘Teriyaki Rorikon’ jazz, Roundeyes?” Frankie shot back. “Your name is Fred Grady, and everybody knows it!"

“I am Takahashi Rumiki!” Fred yelled back, going red in the face. “I am the Thundering Storm, the rising young star of the American Kendo world!”

“You’re Fred Grady,” Cassie muttered, “a sophomore who’s flunking the Low Speech and Alchemy.”

“Takahashi Rumiki is my Samaurai name!” Fred almost shrilled back.

“ooohhh...Samuraiii…” Frankie, who was one-quarter Canton Chinese and one-quarter Korean, murmured snidely. “Big Whoop.”

‘Rumiki’ lashed out with his bokken again, and this time stopped it right in front of one of Frankie’s hazel eyes. “Mind your tongue --- Ho.”

Technically, Fred wasn’t insulting Frankie, since Ho was her family name, but since she’d been cursed into a girl, Frankie was very sensitive to twists on it, especially since it was a slur on her entire family. Frankie started to tense, but Vickie laid a restraining hand on her. "What IS it with the Kendo club?” Vickie started silkily. “I mean, you and Akira Kusogawa, always going around...”

“Do NOT compare me to that freak!” Fred yelped back. Vickie smiled knowing that she’d drawn blood. Akira Kusogawa was the most skilled Kendo-ka on the school team, their most handsome boy-

-and their most notorious homosexual.

“...going around in skirts...”

“These are Hakama, Japanese trousers!”

“...Waving sticks at each other...”

“Kusogawa-sama is an excellent Kendo-ka!”

“...getting each other in those tight, oh-so intimate embraces...”

“That was JUDO practice!”

“...carrying those long...hard...rigid...so masculine...swords, always holding them...and stroking them...so lovingly...until you’re ready to scream...”

‘Rumiki’ indeed let out a scream, and lashed out, his bokken wreathed in purple flame. But, before he could pull his ‘stop at the last second’ trick again, Vickie blocked his blow with her Shield talisman, the red-white-and-blue disk materializing and stopping the energy. “You flinched,” Fred said, gloating.

“No, pinhead,” Vickie said serenely, “I win.”

Sure enough, three spectral figures styled as Italian Magistrates rose up out of the floor around the two. “Fighting is not permitted in this sacred place,” they intoned in a sepulchral chorus.

Fred looked at Vickie, who was grinning at him. “BITCH!”

“Profanity will avail you naught, Miscreant,” they chorused.

“But I-” Fred started, trying desperately to explain that he’d had no intention of actually striking Vickie, that she had, rather, struck his bokken with her shield.

“You lashed out in anger,” Vickie cut him off, “not only with magic, but with a weapon!”

“This is true,” the Three Judges agreed as one. Two of them turned to Fred. “You will come with us.” They took him by his arms and hoisted him up into the air as they took flight.

“And you...” the third Judge said, looking through its featureless mask at Vickie.

Vickie held up her talisman. “Purely a defensive talisman, I couldn’t attack with it, if I wanted.”

“True,” the Magistrate agreed, then joined its fellows up in the air.

They continued to rise up, traveling not in physical space, but something else. As he dwindled away in the hyper-spatial ‘distance’ Fred howled, “But I haven’t had Lunch yet!” 

When the four figures disappeared completely, Vickie turned to her friends and smiled. “GEE, I hope there’s enough Chocolate Fudge cake for everyone!”

As a group, they turned and glowered at Murray the Mouth, who was frantically shoveling dishes of Chocolate Fudge cake off of his tray, and back onto the counter.

*****

Their familiars greeted them at the door to the outer patio. “Well,” Frankie began, “I’m glad you’re back, Vickie, because I’ve made a very important decision!”

“Oh?” Vickie brightened, “You’ve finally decided to start dating? Who’s the lucky guy - or girl?”

“It’s not that,” Frankie dismissed the thought airily, “though I might consider it later. No, I’ve decided to commit myself completely to regaining my lost manhood. I know that this might cost me your friendship, and that’s been hard for me to accept, but-”

Cassie, Yaz and Vickie all rolled their eyes. Frankie, or rather, Frank Ho had a ‘Dream Girl’ curse laid on him by a Senior with a rather sick sense of humor, back in Freshman year. The curse had one of those ‘embarrassing condition’ escape clauses on it, hidden within a riddle poem. But there was something wrong with the ‘escape clause’, and the spell still hadn’t lapsed. So, while Frankie made an absolutely gorgeous Asian girl in the peak of physical condition, there was the uncomfortable matter that it was a crocked spell, which kept her from getting comfortable. Also, the fact that she enjoyed being a girl conflicted with her original very strong male orientation, the reason that she’d been cursed in the first place. So, Frankie changed her mind, as to whether to try and solve the riddle puzzle or accept being a girl, an average of three times a week. By Friday, Frankie would have changed her mind again, decided to embrace being a girl, and be talking about accepting dates.

Cassie let out an aggravated gasp of exasperation as they approached the table where Trixie was waiting for them, along with Jase Constantine and their familiars. Jase was sitting very close to Trixie; maybe he was working his way up to asking her out again?

Vickie sat down and waited for Jase to make his move, but just as he seemed to be about to ask something, Trixie’s cell phone went off. Well, Vickie thought, we can’t have that again! When Trixie hung up, Vickie asked, “Hey, Trix, can I borrow your cell?” Trixie handed Vickie her phone. “Hey Mom! Yeah, it’s me, I’m back! Anyway, do you need me for anything, or can I hang with my friends after school? Cool! Thanks, Mom!” Then she shut the cell phone off without drawing attention to it.

Jase looked at her oddly. “You have to ask your mommy permission to hang out with your friends?”

“No, I just wanted to let her know that ‘Plan A’ worked, so she wouldn’t go through the bother of  ‘Plan B’.” Vickie looked around. “Where’s Dylan?” she asked Jase.

“Had some business to take care of,” Jase answered as he took a big bite of his sandwich.

Then Roger Wilco, Dylan’s small griffin familiar landed on the table in a heap of wings and oversized paws. “Hullo, Vickie!” Roger said brightly, “Looking good, as per uze!”

Vickie grinned, leaned over and scratched Roger behind his pointy ears. Roger had a sort of eager puppy dog charm that just made you want to pick him up and cuddle him. Then Dylan and Doug Hammersmith struggled up to the table, carrying a wooden tub of dirt between them.

“What’s this?” Yazmin asked.

“Just a sec,” Dylan said, as he and Doug settled the tub next to the table. When it was squarely set, Hammersmith’s mandrake familiar scrambled down from his shoulder where it had been riding, and set its roots into the soil. When it felt comfortable, it shed its humanoid form, and appeared as a leafy shrub. “Pfew! That thing is heavy!”

“Tell me about it,” Doug groaned. “But Cedric’s worth it.” With that, he opened a single serving carton of plant food and poured it in careful drabs around the plant familiar’s roots. Cedric perked up visibly and you could just feel the bond between them.

Vickie gave him a look. “ah, Dougie, I know that I’ve asked it before, but still I gotta know. It’s pretty obvious that this crew put you up to dueling with my male alter ego. But what did they offer you?”

“ah, Well...” Doug sat down next to Yaz and gave Trixie a look.

Trixie cleared her throat. “Well, when I asked him, I offered him some of my best enchantments - and you KNOW how good my enchantments are! - but he didn’t want any of that. He wanted something really special.”

“Special?” Vickie didn’t like the sound of that.

“Yep! He wanted a date. With you-”

Trixie turned, “- Yaz.”

“Me?” Yaz said, surprised. She looked over at Doug, who was smiling up at her, his face beet red.

“Well, I’ve always sort of had a thing for Xena, Warrior Princess,” he said with an embarrassed grin.

“Really?” Yaz beamed down at him. “I LOVE that show!”

“I have the first three seasons on DVD!” Doug and Yaz were suddenly happily planning a viewing party, as Vickie leaned over and kissed Dylan on the cheek.

“So, Vickie, how long are we gonna have you for, this time?”

“Dunno. Four days - definitely; six days - a good bet; eight days - iffy; ten days - a possibility, but I wouldn’t bet on it; fourteen days - horrendously unlikely. I keep gaining a day or so, and then losing two or three. I had Nine days this time, so six is a good bet.”

“But you’re gaining time.”

“Yeah, but I don’t really know what that means,” Vickie said as she fed Slyboots some strips of meat from a ‘Familiar Chow©’ box.

“Does it mean that you’ll be around for the weekend?”

“Well, sure!”

“Cool!” Yazmine said as she looked over from where she’d been chatting with Doug. “Saturday! My Place! First Season of Xena! I’ll wear that black leather mini-dress that I’ve been saving up for!” She pulled Doug over to her, as he beamed at the proximity to her bust.

“You should be careful of your social plans, Hammersmith,” came a familiar voice. They all turned to see Lexie Verlaine standing there, with her cat perched on her shoulders. “If Trejos there is looking to play ‘Xena’, you look like you'd fit the role of ‘Gabrielle’ too well for your own sake.”

Yaz looked over at Doug. “He’s not _that_ short!”

“What do you want, Lexie?” Vickie asked wearily.

Lexie ignored her and walked over to Dylan. “Listen up, Welles, we need to talk. You think that you're being really clever with all of this, but you aren’t. Yeah, I know you want your perfect little girlfriend, but there’s obviously something that you aren’t coping with very well --- the fact that she’s a FRAUD!”

“Lexie, the fact that Vickie is Victor’s alter ego isn’t exactly a secret.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about, nimnul!” Lexie snapped. “This *ahem!* ‘girl’ isn’t a real person! She’s a fluke, she’s something that Vic’s magic does when things go wrong! She has no reality! She no real right to exist! But, instead of helping Vic work through this rather embarrassing fix, you yutzes are only making it WORSE, ‘cause you like hanging out with this figment of Vic’s imagination!”

“Hey!” Yazmin started to rise, “Vickie’s as real as _I_ am!”

“ooohhh... Like THAT’S some kind of recommendation, OSWALDO,” Lexie shot back with a vicious smirk.

Yazmin looked nervously over at Doug. Doug smiled back. “Chill out, Yaz!” he breezed, “Dylan made sure that I knew all about *ahem!* ‘Oswaldo’.” Yazmin had originally been Oswaldo Trejos, a shrimpy ‘Chihuahua’ type Latino boy for whom the gift of magical power had been the first break that he’d ever gotten in his life. Even then, in school, he’d pretty much been the Big Dogs’ squeaky toy. Then one of his ‘Muy Machismo’ spell experiments got tangled up in someone’s Skank hex, and Yazmin, the tall, strapping, and nicely stacked kick-butt amazon was born. Besides looking a lot better in a bikini, Yaz found that she was a lot more confident and dynamic as a girl. Unfortunately, permanent transformations were way out of Yazmin’s league, and she reverted back to Oswaldo. The shock had been so great that Oswaldo immediately started on restoring himself, and managed to duplicate the effect. Alas, such workings suffer greatly from a lack of objectivity, and Yazmin had a tendency to revert at awkward times. There were girls who still hadn’t forgiven Yaz for changing into Oz in the girls’ shower after PE.

“And?” Yaz asked, a touch of panic in her voice.

“You’re trying to stay like you are now?”

“Well...YEAH!” Yaz pulled herself up in a pose.

Doug grinned. “Good Choice!” He gave her a chipper thumbs up.

Yaz melted. “Really?” She leaned over with a leer. “I think I like you!” Doug just leered back.

“GOD!” Lexie shrieked, “You bozos just DON’T GET IT, do you? All this is NOT NATURAL! Welles, if you had any real regard for the person sitting next to you, you’d stop pulling this crap so that Vic - the REAL Vic - could have a chance to catch up to this thing here, and resolve the imbalance! The more *ahem!* ‘Vickie’ is allowed to outstrip Vic, the worse it’s going to get.”

“If you’re trying to make this sound bad, Verlaine,” Cassie muttered from behind folded arms, “yer gonna have to do better’n that. Throw in a Biblical Prophecy or two.”

“Besides,” Trixie said as two of Dolby’s heads fought over the same scrap of meat, “what business is it of yours, Lexie? I mean, unless you’re interested in Vic? In a...romantic way?”

Lexie blushed, but didn’t flinch. “Vic’s cute, all right - if you like ‘em sleek, sneaky and sly.” Which was exactly how she liked ‘em, Lexie carefully left unsaid. After all, Vic was sitting right there, after a fashion.

“Well,” Vickie said reassuringly, “if it means anything to you, Lex, I am taking this situation seriously. As a matter of fact, I just got here after an examination with Miss Firth.” Vickie held up a sheaf of papers. “Still, not enough information to make an educated evaluation, and all that.”

Lexie took the papers from Vickie, shuffled through them, and, when it was obvious that she wasn’t seeing anything that she could use, threw them back on the tabletop. *Humph!* She scooped up her cat and walked off in a huff.

Cassie started to say something, but Vickie held up a restraining hand. Just as Lexie was about to enter the school building, Vickie made a gesture with her hand, and Lexie’s clothes suddenly disappeared. With a grin Vickie said, “I wonder how long it will be, until she figures out that her clothes are invisible?”

“About five seconds,” Jase said, “I mean, the first thing that she’s gonna do, when people start lookin’ at her weird, is check to see if anything’s wrong with her clothes, right?”

“And those clothes will be perfectly visible - to her and her familiar,” Vickie replied with a smirk.

Doug was impressed. “You managed to pull that off, off the cuff? MAN, am I glad that I didn’t face YOU in the ring!”

“Actually, it was something that Doug was working on. He had it in mind for Mary Christmas, the cheerleader with the double-dees, but I figure that he’d be just as happy knowing that Lexie doesn’t stuff her bra.”

“But how did you pull it off?” Trixie asked.

“Well, it was a tad obvious that Lexie wasn’t just here to razz me,” Vickie said as she pulled a couple of magically insulated plastic clothespins from her purse. “And she was making moves toward my report, so-” With the pin, she turned one of the pages upside down, revealing a Hex slip. “Since she accepted the pages, the hex took. Now, if I’d taken the pages back, she’d have turned it back on me, as well as this-” With the pin, she fished out another Hex slip. Vickie peered at it. “oohh...the Doofus Hex! She IS pissed.”

The ‘Doofus Hex’ was a spell that interfered with the victim’s motor and impulse control, reducing them to a jerking, spasming fool, who overreacted to everything. The Doofus Hex lasted until the victim could do something that was agreed to be Cool, in front of a large group. Given the rather vicious nature of teenage humor, a Doofus Hex could last a LONG time.

“What were we talking about, before Miss Smartass showed up?” Cassie asked.

“Oh! Right!” Yaz remembered, “My Place, Saturday! First Season of Xena! Doug’s bringing the DVDs.”

“Hold on.” Vickie raised a restraining hand. “First things first.” She peered at Doug with a penetrating gaze. “Hammersmith, before we go any further, exactly where did you get that ‘wand’ that you used in our match?”

“Oh, this?” Doug produced the arm-like stick from his ‘deep pocket’, “Well, about a month ago, a bunch of ‘poachers’ from Crowley jumped us on our way home, and Cedric lost an arm in the scuffle. I tried to restore it, but Ceddy was already growing a new one. It hasn’t quite grown back fully, but it’s getting there. Anyway, it turned out that this wand forms a very nice physical link to Cedric, and is a natural conductor of magical power. Also, it has other uses.” He used the ‘hand’ at the end to reach for a soft drink out of range.

“Still,” Vickie said, eyeing the amputated limb, “how does, ah, Cedric feel about this?”

In silent reply, a wooden hand popped out of the shrub and gave a thumbs up.

Doug gave Vickie a reproving glower. “What do you take me for, someone who’d maim his own familiar?”

Vickie looked right back him, straight in the eye. “Let me turn it around for you - what do you take ME for, someone who’d let her friend date someone walking around with something like that, without even asking?”

Doug shrugged, and the conversation went on to cover other topics. “So, is anyone gonna be doing any dueling after school?”

There was a general shaking of heads. Vickie explained, to Doug, “When I start getting ‘short’ on days, that is when it seems about time that I change back, I beg off on challenges, on the grounds that I may not be around to honor them. And my guess is that these guys were holding off, in case they needed a free hand to bring me back.”

“It’s a pain,” Dylan commented mournfully. He turned to Vickie. “Wanna make up for the effort?” Vickie responded with a deep kiss. Yes, they were THAT kind of couple.

Jase looked meaningfully over at Trixie, but Trixie only smiled coyly. Still, she did lay her hand on his. Doug leaned over to Yasmin, but she gave him a playful tap on the nose. “Rush things much?” she said, coyly.

“HEY! Frankie said, “What about those of us who DON’T have Bee-Efs?”

“Well, you wouldn’t be in this situation, if you didn’t keep changing your mind every other day!” Cassie said reprovingly. “I mean, it’s hard enough for a boy to admit that he’s attracted to a girl who used to be a boy - how’s he supposed to overcome that, if she keeps saying that she’s gonna turn back into a boy any day now, by Christmas at the very latest?”

Frankie riposted with a jab about Cassie’s habit of finding ‘the perfect boy’, dating him intensely for a week, and cutting it off in a huff. From there, Lunch proceeded enjoyably, with Dylan and Vickie canoodling, Trixie, Jase, Yasmin and Doug flirting, Frankie and Cassie bickering, and their assorted familiars looking on in amusement.

But all good things must come to an end, and so did lunch. Vickie and Trixie paired off and headed for their Enchantment Theory class, which would be followed by an hour of Enchantment Lab. Vickie had chosen her seating arrangements very carefully. In Enchantment, she sat in the Second Row, which was close enough to keep a very close eye on Mister Fleming, the ‘Spelling’ teacher, but not so close that he might slip on her drool. But Mr. Fleming hadn’t shown up yet, and ‘Litigious Lynn’ Bergen was in full cry - as usual.

“It’s persecution, plain and simple!”

“What’s got her knickers in a twist this time?” Vickie asked Javier Cole, who was sitting next to her.

“She’s on about Rakal Hadrinsen’s Nobel Prize being taken away.” Rakal Hadrinsen was a Swedish Mage who had been born Inger Snovit, and trained to be a sorcerer. But Inger wasn’t very good at the work, and ‘dropped out’. She took the name Rakal Hadrinsen and dummied up a past that included a degree in High Energy Physics. While she hadn’t been very good at Magic, her mundane education was still first-rate, and she had made a major breakthrough in using Tesla Coils for a very effective Ionic Pulse engine. The Hadrinsen Engine was slated to become the workhorse of the European Space Program, and Dr. Hadrinsen herself had been nominated for the Nobel. But, the publicity from when she won caused journalists to check her background and her ‘broom fell out of the closet’. There was a big scandal, and a lot of people in the Scientific Community were screaming ‘Cheat!’ There was even talk of Hadrinsen losing her patents for her Ionic Pulse engine, and the Nobel Committee’s revoking the prize didn’t bode well in that direction.

“WHY should it matter that Hadrinsen is a Mage?” Lynn demanded almost at the top of her lungs. “Why would it matter, even if she used magic to figure out how to make the damn thing work? The POINT is that the Hadrinsen Engine works, and it works on totally non-magical principles! What? Are they afraid that some monsignor or something is gonna say a Pater Noster during a space flight, and it’s gonna knock out the engine?”

“No,” Xander Patachis said in a tight, ‘I’m tired of listening to you yap’ tone of voice, “It’s about the Mundanes’ perfectly justified concerns about Unethical Mages using magical power to seize political control.”

“Why should WE suffer, because of their paranoia?” Lynn demanded. But then, Lynn was always demanding something or another.

“Because it isn’t complete paranoia,” Patachis responded stoically. “In the 1970s and 80s, hackers stole millions, because they knew how to use computers, when the majority didn’t. When a minority has a material advantage over the majority, there ARE going to be a section of that minority that are going to exploit that advantage for everything it’s worth. And everyone knows it. The laws that are in place right now are clumsy and rather restrictive-”

“Restrictive?” Lynn grated, “They’re REPRESSIVE!”

“But there IS one thing that we Mages still have, that ensures that eventually, the laws will change, when more...elegant...means of protecting the Mundanes are developed.”

“Oh? And what’s this ‘one thing’ that’s keeping you so chipper, X?” Lynna said from behind crossed arms.

Xander smiled. “We still have the right to sue. We can challenge statutes and regulations, if we can prove that they violate our Constitutional Rights, and that striking them down doesn’t violate the Constitutional Rights of the Mundanes.”

“Ooohhh...I’m sure that that’s a great comfort to Rakal Hadrinsen right about now,” Lynn sneered.

“Actually, it should be,” Vickie chipped in. “Hadrinsen apparently took great pains to make sure that her patents were filed in the US. That means American patent law, which states that it doesn’t matter WHO actually came up with something, that it was who got to the Patent Office first, that matters. If anyone actually tries to invalidate her patent on the grounds of ‘Unfair Competition’, that endangers an entire mountain of contemporary patents that were obtained in even more ‘unfair’ methods. Nope, Lynn, I wouldn’t worry about Hadrinsen; she might get slapped with some pretty nasty lawsuits, but as regards her patents, she has a LOT of people with a LOT of money and very NASTY lawyers backing her up.”

“Yes,” a deep, silky voice with one of those wonderful British ‘Public School’ accents came from the door. “Dr. Hadrinsen covered herself very well, except for ONE THING.” Mister Evan Fleming, the Enchantments Theory, or ‘Spelling’ teacher walked in, the panther-like grace of his lithe physique quietly emphasized by the elegant cut of his suit. “And what WAS that oversight?”

“She didn’t cover herself well enough,” Lynn grumbled from her seat.

“No,” Fleming gently reproved, “her omission was in ‘going underground’ in the first place. By doing so, she placed herself outside the Law, and thereby, vulnerable to predators technically within the Law.” Mister Fleming was absolutely gorgeous, and he had more than just good looks, he had STYLE, true panache. He had a way of holding himself and speaking that kept the girls hanging on every word, and the boys taking secret notes that had nothing to do with Enchantment. And it wasn’t magical - if it were, the boys would have detected, analyzed, and duplicated it long ago. “And what can we, here in this class, learn from Dr. Hadrinsen’s troubles?”

“Cover your tracks better?” came from the back of the class.

“No,” though Fleming still chuckled, “it is that a single - a SINGLE! - bad calculation can undo years of hard work. Miss Nourric! What is the difference between Hard Science and one of the ‘fuzzier’ disciplines?”

Lillie Nourric blinked at being suddenly addressed. “uhm, Hard Science deals with solid evidence, that can be scientifically proven or disproven, while the other ones are more about observing trends and stuff?”

“Very Good,” Mr. Fleming said with a smile. Lillie grinned back, and was probably creaming in her panties. “Good try, but not quite. In Hard Science, factors can be calculated as MATHEMATICS! Class, what is Leopold’s Second Law?”

“All Spells are mathematical equations,” they droned together with a collective note of martyrdom.

“Yes, I know that you’ve all heard this before, but it bears repeating. Conjury, Divination, Sorcery and Wizardry are all the Arts, even High Arts, but Enchantment is a SCIENCE! Whether it’s in the Low, Middle or High Script, every part of every character has a precise numerological value, which can be factored and computed by precise mathematical means. HOWEVER, each character and symbols MUST be used in a specific way to achieve a specific effect. As in Mathematics, there is no ‘almost’ or ‘near miss’ - you either got it right or you got it wrong. Period. You can try to work a little poetry into your work, but it MUST be accurate, or the beauty won’t mean a thing!”

He picked up a sheaf of papers from his desk. “You’re probably wondering why I’m belaboring this point, which you’ve all heard a hundred times before.” He held up the papers. “These are photocopies of a Hex slip that was used on a freshman this morning. I want you to decipher the hex, and figure out what it was supposed to do. Then, I want you to find the ERROR, and figure out what it wound up doing. You may use your books.” He passed copies to each row.

Mildly intrigued, Vickie brought out her books and a calculator, and went to work. At first glance it was a relatively simple and harmless - if embarrassing - hex, the sort that went around the school corridors all the time. Then she double-checked the characters. Then she triple checked them. And then, on her fourth go around, she spotted it: a simple operating symbol error. But, if it didn’t do what it was supposed to do, then it would—

Vickie’s eyes snapped wide open. She murmured a sick, “Sweet Mary, Mother of God!” and crossed herself. From the muted chokes and curses around her, Vickie could tell that the rest of her classmates had come to the same conclusion that she had. Even the yahoos in the back row didn’t crack any sick jokes.

Fleming figured that they all had figured it out, when they were looking at him with shocked eyes. “Yes,” he began, holding up one copy, “someone actually got the full effect of this, right between the eyes.”

A hand shot up. “Is she okay?”

“Yes. Fortunately, his friends had a good idea of who did it, and we were able to reverse the effect by passing the hex back to the person who sent it. Yes, I know that that sounds cruel and unusual, but consider this: the caster was a senior. He not only should have known better than to use a hex like that on a freshman, but he was ethically responsible for the effects of the hex. We know that we can’t stop these pranks, so we try to make them as educational as possible. As long as the prank doesn’t cause any permanent harm, there’s not a lot that we can do. But THIS-” he held up the copy, “-is totally unacceptable. Remember, just because you CAN do something, doesn’t mean that you should. So, as punishment, the aforementioned senior will have to live with the consequences of his blunder for the duration of the spell.”

Vickie did some quick mental calculations - 144 hours, or six days of THAT seemed a little steep, but it wasn’t anything that she hadn’t done to someone else.

“Now, the greater point here, is that this poor blighted fool made ONE minor error. A single symbol, that turned a simple, if embarrassing prank into a thing of horror. As in Mathematics, one single adjustment can completely change, even totally reverse the effect of an equation. For instance-” he diagramed a glyph in the High Script, “-this is the Sigil of Saturn. Saturn, as you should know, is associated with Secrets. But Secrets covers a lot of ground. For instance, this configuration means ‘preventing others from discovering something’. But, if it changes to this-” he made a minor alteration that caused a reversal, “-it means ‘discovering what others are hiding’.” From there, he made yet more minor changes, which shifted the emphasis of the glyph to ‘concealment’, then ‘finding’, then ‘secret communication’, and then ‘decoding’. There was even a configuration for Learning."

At this a hand shot up. “If Enchantment is a Science, then howcum we can’t use Learning spells to learn it? The teachers say that using Learning spells to learn magic is like trying to fly by pulling up on your shoelaces, because Magic is so subjective. But, if it’s a Science, then isn’t it objective? Wouldn’t the Learning spells work?”

“Yes, and no,” Fleming hedged, “it would work on the mathematical aspects, but it would prevent you from absorbing the very abstract meaning of each value. Nice try, though.”

*****

After Enchantment Theory, came the Enchantment Laboratory. Chant Lab was a lot more free-structured than most of the Magic Session. The students were given projects to work on, but it was a given that as long as they got those projects done and graded, that they could work on their own projects as well. Vickie did a little work on her ‘home plate’ project, which would have doubled her ‘jaunt’ range. The idea was that Vickie would attune the ‘home plate’, and keep it at home; when she wanted to get home quickly, she could safely ‘jump blind’ to where the plate was kept, something that was normally quite dangerous.

It could also help her sneak in, when she was out past her curfew. It might be best if she didn’t tell her parents about this particular achievement.

But, it was very precise work, and each set of glyphs had to ‘settle in’ before new ones could be added. So, after she very carefully triple checked her spelling and ‘grammar’, she was free to work on that Rosedew potion for Aunt Fay. She knew that Mom wouldn’t like it, but Vic had made a promise, and bad things happen to Mages who break promises.

Vickie pulled out the binding card with the Sewer Baby in it, and consulted her copy of Grainger’s Field Guide to the Supernatural (Vocational School edition). Grainger’s was THE informed source on magical critters of all sorts. Grainger’s held its position due greatly to the stress that its editors placed on accurate, objective, non-partisan descriptions of the beings involved, and the fact that it was constantly being updated as new facts and reports came in and were verified. Of course, that also meant that Grainger’s always had a new, must-have edition every year, but that’s just good business. Grainger’s published slightly different editions for General Publication, Vocational Schools, Universities, Professionals and the Government. Vickie’s Vocational School edition was different from the General Publication edition, in that it was almost half again as thick, and besides the dangers and banes that a creature had, it listed the alchemical uses of various parts of a creature and the matrixes that could be culled from one.

According to Grainger’s, besides the ‘Milk of Human Kindness’, you could separate matrixes for the Pass-Door, Feel-Pity, Mother-Love and Forget-Me-Now powers from a Sewer Baby. The Pass-Door matrix was almost useless - practically everyone had anti-magic charms on their locks these days. But the Feel-Pity, Mother-Love and Forget-Me-Now matrixes could be very useful. Vickie felt a pang of doubt - would it be a good idea to allow that weasel Vic to have access to these? But then, a fox-grin spread over her face; SHE could think of all sorts of fun stuff that she could pull with them, too. She pulled on a lab coat, rubberized apron, gas mask and gloves, but when she was all suited up, all the cauldrons were taken.

Then, she spotted Chelkiss, working on something. Oh well, might as well kill two birds with one stone...

She pulled her gas mask up and walked over to his station. “Hey, Chelkiss...”

“Whaddya want?” he snapped, barely looking up.

“I just wanted to apologize!” Vickie said in a hurt voice. “It was a really shitty stunt that my other half pulled on you. That Shield matrix is a wonderful piece of work, Darryl, and Vic had no right to rip it off.” She pulled out the Shield talisman and presented it. “To make things right, I wanna give it back.”

Chelkiss looked at the talisman with no small amount of longing, and even stretched out his hand. But, he pulled it back. “No. He may have been an underhanded weasel in the way that he pulled it off, but Vic still beat me fair and square. The Shield is yours, by right.”

Vickie pulled the talisman back, worry clear on her face. “But that isn’t right! This is GREAT work! You shouldn’t have to lose this!”

Chelkiss sighed, and offered Vickie a seat at the station. “Actually, what I really regret wasn’t so much losing the Shield, or even losing my ranking, it was losing to a bottom feeder like VIC!”

“Tell me about it! I have to live with the fink - sort of.”

Chelkiss gave out a long sigh. “Well, I suppose I had it coming. Looking back, I realize that Vic was right - I WAS relying too much on my tools, powering my way through fights, and not using tactics or strategy.”

Vickie laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Look at the bright side; at least you got back at the rat’s ass! Nice play with the powerstone, by the way.”

“ah, Yeah, sorry about that.”

“What? Like _I’M_ gonna complain?” Vickie leaned over. “So, wha’cha workin’ on?”

“Oh, I’m re-tooling a few of my things; for instance, I over-specialized my power ring so that it was only a blaster. While I’ll never be able to make it as powerful as a real ‘Green Lantern’ power ring, I should be able to widen its scope so that it provides a shield and maybe a snare as well. Now that Vic’s shown everyone my glaring weaknesses, I’m gonna have to do a lot of re-thinking.”

Vickie paused. “Well, it’s been a while since I - or more accurately, Vic - was into comic books, but wasn’t there a magical Green Lantern, back in World War II?”

“ah, Yeah, the ‘Alan Scott’ version.”

“Didn’t his ring work pretty much the same way as the pseudo-scientific one, except that it couldn’t affect wood, instead of anything yellow?”

Chelkiss mulled that over for a bit. “So, let the opposition think that they have a perfect counter to my ‘power ring’, to lure them into assuming that that defense will beat me...”

“Actually, I was thinking more about ‘thinking outside the comic book’.”

“What do you mean?”

“Chelkiss, you’re limiting yourself by sticking with all this comic book stuff. I mean, it was probably a great place to kick off from, but I really think that it’s time to move past that, and start thinking in terms of stuff that’s effective in its own right. If nothing else, it will confuse the guys who are reading up on their funny books, looking for loopholes.”

Chelkiss sighed. “You may be right. It was only a matter of time before someone figured out the weaknesses in my style. I guess that I should be happy that Roker gave me a week’s grace period, before I get buried under a hill of challenges.”

Chelkiss kept all of his attention on the ring until he was finished. “So! What are you working on?”

“I have a Sewer Baby that I want to boil down.”

“Oh? You have someone whose disposition needs sweetening?”

“No, an aunt of mine wants some Rosedew lotion. Tell you what, Chelkiss - I’ll let you keep whichever of the matrixes you want.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Still trying to make it up to me?”

“Hey, Newton’s Second Law, as applied to magic: ‘In the end, everything balances out’. I’d prefer to balance this out in a friendly way.”

Chelkiss shrugged, and looked at the card. “Sewer Baby, hunh?”

“Yeah, according to Grainger’s, it incorporates the Pass-Door, Feel-Pity, Mother-Love and Forget-Me-Now matrixes. The Pass-Door matrix is pretty wimpy, but the Feel-Pity, Mother-Love and Forget-Me-Now matrixes can be a lot of fun, if you use them right. If you help me boil down the Sewer Baby, I’ll let you keep one of them.”

“Actually,” Chelkiss corrected her, “I’m a lot more interested in the Pass-Door matrix.”

“Why?” Vickie was incredulous. “Everybody and their paranoid cousin Elmer has a charm-proof lock!”

“True,” Chelkiss manifested the Sewer Baby out of the card and together they managed to cram the shrieking goblin into a cauldron, “but I think with a little tweaking, the Pass-Door could be turned into a Barrier spell breaching effect.”

“Really? Cool!”

As Vickie concentrated on boiling down the goblin, Chelkiss concentrated on carefully inscribing the Word of Portal, in the High Script, on a talisman blank. It took him several tries to get it just right, but the High Script is something that you do just right, or you don’t do at all. “Is the Pass-Door matrix ready?” he asked tersely.

“Just a sec - got it!” Vicky carefully pulled the whirling pattern of magical energies out from the bubbling mass, pinned on seven long metal probes, and handed the probes over to Chelkiss.

Gingerly, Chelkiss wrapped the matrix around the Word, being careful not to rupture the matrix on the Word. One point at a time, he affixed the matrix, and subtly altered the interplay of power. Vickie noticed that instead of the incredibly complex play of energies that he’d used in the Shield matrix, this time, Chelkiss was carefully paring down the matrix into a much simpler, far more elegant pattern. When it was stable, Chelkiss looked at Vickie. “Would you happen to have a Barrier hex ready?”

“Yeah - d’you want a Powerwall, Stonewall or Ironwall hex?”

“Throw an Ironwall hex.”

“Are you sure? Ironwall’s pretty tough.”

“And what’s the point of testing a matrix on a flimsy wall?”

“Good point.”

Vickie moved to the testing circle and pulled out a slip with the Words for ‘Iron’ and ‘Obstacle’ written in the Middle Script on it. She said an activating word, and an 8 x 8 foot, 8-inch thick wall of iron appeared. Chelkiss walked up, gave the wall a testing rap of the knuckles, and was rewarded by a very satisfactory ring. “Very Nice! And the rivets on the reinforcing bars are very well done.”

Vickie looked around the edge of the wall and smiled. “Praise from the Master! Okay, ready on this side!”

Rather self-consciously, Chelkiss decided to forego his usual comic book trappings, and connected the Pass-Wall talisman to a generic wand. He gave the Ironwall a brisk tap, and the wall rose up, forming an elegant ‘moon gate’.

Vickie looked through the gate. “Well! I wasn’t expecting that!”

Chelkis checked out the arch with pride. “Yep, I figured that the key to the Pass-Door power was to enable passage through a barrier with the least amount of disruption. So, I wove the Pass-Door matrix around the Word of Door, figuring they would focus and amplify each other. Breaking down or disrupting a barrier is hard and requires a lot of energy - this just reconfigures the barrier so that it doesn’t bar anymore.”

“Is it confined to just Barrier spells, or any kind of restraint?”

“To be honest, I’m not really sure.” Chelkiss was about to elaborate when Litigious Lynn and her beleaguered lab partner came to the circle, wanting to test their project. Lynn started up, and Vickie and Darryl did what most people did - they shut down and moved, because it was easier than putting up with her.

“Man, I wish someone could figure out a way to shut her up!” Chelkiss grouched. “The only person who stands up to her is ‘Deliver Us From Eva’, and that’s like one of those Japanese giant monster movie fights - fun to watch from a distance, but no one sane wants to be anywhere near one.”

Vickie gave him a sideways look. “Are you serious about that, Darryl?”

“ah, Sure!”

“Okay, then separate that Forget-Me-Now matrix, while I whip up a few things.”

Chelkiss separated the Forget-Me-Now matrix as Vickie hurriedly worked out a couple of Hex slips. When Chelkiss finished, Vickie took the talisman and said, “Okay, Darryl, you say that you need to learn some strategy? Check this out. First lesson - tailor your attack to fit the target. Observe.”

Vickie walked over to the table where Litigious Lynn was berating her ‘partner’ for ‘sabotaging’ ‘her’ project. “Now, now, Lynn!” she cooed, “Why so upset?”

“This MORON just screwed up two days’ work!”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Of COURSE I’m sure!” A dangerous glint grew in Lynn’s eye. She may not be the living nightmare that ‘Deliver Us From Eva’ was, but she wasn’t used to being challenged.

“Really?” Vickie looked it over. “Because what I’m seeing here, is some seriously sloppy work. Lynn, you gotta stop blaming everyone else for your mistakes, and focus on what you’re doing!”

A tic erupted on the corner of Lynn’s eye. “What are you saying, freak?”

“I’m saying that you’re sloppy, and you blame everyone else for your mistakes, and because you’re such a rage-aholic, people let you get away with it. Why, I’ll bet that you’re so careless, that I could just walk up and plant a Hex Slip on you, right in front of your eyes.”

Lynn crossed her arms and looked unimpressed. “You’re on.”

“First things first.” Vickie pulled out one of the Hex Slips. “Bet Slip. If I win, you don’t try to get back at me, on pain of taking all my Bad Luck for a year. If you win-”

“If I win, you’re my personal assistant and all around SLAVE for a YEAR!” Lynn grabbed the initiative.

“You’re on,” Vickie grinned.

They both signed the slip, sealing the pact. Then Vickie produced a Hex slip. Lynn looked at the slip, unimpressed. Vickie took the slip and placed it inside Lynn’s book. “Is THAT your best move?” Lynn snorted, ”You’d better be VERY good at cleaning under beds!”

Vickie held up a finger and then flashed the Forget-Me-Now talisman on Lynn. Lynn shook her head, and opened her eyes. “Hey, what are you doing here, Freak?” she demanded of Vickie.

“I wanted to look at this book.” Vickie reached for the textbook with the hex slip inside.

“Well, use your OWN!” Lynn snatched the book away. As she tucked the book under her arm, Lynn opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out.

With an evil grin, Vickie leaned over to Lynn’s partner and said, “Abby, would you be a dear, and inform her as to the details of our little bet?”

Vickie twirled the ‘Forget-Me-Now’ talisman on its cord as she sashayed back to the workstation. As she sat down, she looked chipperly at Chelkiss and said, “And what have we learned from this little exercise?”

“Never make a sucker bet with you?” Darryl looked over at where Lynn was gesturing widely as Abby was filling her in. “I appreciate the quiet and all, but was that really a good idea? I mean, if anyone can find a loophole in the terms of that bet, it would be Lynn!”

“Not to worry, Pookie,” Vickie grinned, “I biased that hex so that it hinged on the INTENT to retaliate, not the actual ACT, and it’s clearly spelled out on the slip. If she tries to get back at me - for ANYTHING - she’ll be picking up my Karmic tab for a year.” A look flickered across her face. “I wonder how I could slip one of those on ‘Deliver Us From’ Eva?”

Chelkiss leaned his chin on his hand. “You know, as much as the Litigator deserved that, it wasn’t a very nice thing to do.”

Vickie shrugged. “Okay, I admit that I come across as kind of a goodie-goodie, but really, I’m just another side of Vic. I’m just a side that realizes that some people deserve to get pranked, and some people don’t, and Vic just doesn’t give a shit.” Vickie screwed up her face and said in a ‘Yoda’ voice, “Learned, have we what, Padawan?”

“Whenever possible, blindside your opponent?” Chelkiss said, puzzled.

“No,” Vickie waved her finger, “the first rule of tactics is: ‘Always Keep Control Of The Conflict’. I got Lynn where she was reacting to what I was saying, and I never let her decide the context of what was happening. Bullies do this a lot - they force a rather farcical definition on a situation, and keep you hopping to keep them from branding you a fool. Which they do, anyway. If my memory serves me right, that’s how Vic got you in the ring; he got you reacting, not acting, and controlled the cues that you reacted to. Of course, with Lynn, it was a lot easier with this-” Vickie held up the Forget-Me-Now talisman. “Come to think of it, I’d really rather that Vic not have something this powerful. You’d better take it, Darryl.”

Chelkiss waved it off. “Why does Vic have to know about it?”

“Well, I can’t control what Vic picks up on, and this is exactly the sort of thing that he’d remember, when he comes back.”

Chelkiss smirked, “Not necessarily.”

“What do you mean?” Vickie asked, eyebrow raised. She could think of all sorts of fun things to do with a Forget-Me-Now talisman, but she really didn’t want to get involved in the sort of nastiness that Vic might put it to.

“The Sigil of Saturn.”

“That High Script Glyph that Mister Fleming showed us? What about it?”

Chelkiss started sketching out a Hex Slip. “Fleming diagramed out the components of the Sigil, and I think that I can duplicate it, especially since he spelled out the numerological factors. I think if I change it this way-” he made a minor alteration, “-I think I can arrange it so that the Sigil will prevent Vic from learning anything about the Forget-Me-Now talisman.”

“But won’t I still have memories about it, from before the Sigil is applied?”

Chelkiss finished his calculations. “Not a problem. The Sigil will block Vic from learning anything about the talisman from your memory, regardless of the time. It’s keyed to the concept, not the time frame.”

Vickie looked at the Hex slip. It was flawless. “Chelkiss, I said it before, and I’ll say it again - you are an ARTIST! Y’know, I’m gonna hang onto that Shield matrix after all. I have a feeling, in ten or fifteen years, owning an original Chelkiss talisman is going to be like owning an original Faberge or Tiffany piece; a real status symbol!”

Chelkiss grinned and bowed in his seat. “It’s the least that I can do for a Gracious Lady.”

Vickie leaned over and gave him a kiss on the brow. “Y’know, Darryl, if you polish that ‘chivalrous gentleman’ act up a little, and you might do better with the girls!”

*****

The Sigil of Saturn charm worked like - well, a charm. Vickie could tell that the very concept of the Forget-Me-Now talisman was hidden from her other half, but it didn’t cause her any discomfort.

*****

After school, the Five Fs, their beaus and assorted familiars met at the foot of Zelda, one of the sphinxes flanking the main entrance. “Well,” Cassie said, “who wants to start the ‘Waddya wanna do, Marty?’ joke?”

“Not a question,” Trixie asserted. “Doug here provided invaluable assistance with getting Vickie back, in exchange for a date with Yaz. For such an effort, Doug is owed a full, proper, no-fooling-around date. BUT, that date should, in the fullness of things happen on either Friday or Saturday night. So, in preparation for that, there must be at least one Pre-Date Date, to let these to get to know each other a bit, so they can intelligently plan a proper date that is suitable repayment for the service already provided. I suggest that such a Pre-Date Date would best be performed at Pop Tate’s™, with large frozen desserts provided for the female contingent. All those in favor?”

Five female voices chorused, "Aye!"

“Motion carried!” And the girls went off in the general direction of Pop Tate’s™.

“What carried?” Doug flustered, “They didn’t even bother to stop to ask us what WE wanted!”

Jase just pushed him in the direction that the girls had gone. “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”

*****

They had gone less that halfway to Pop Tate’s™ when Vickie stopped them with a raised hand, and began sniffing at the air. “What’s all that about?” Doug said with a jerk of his thumb at Vickie. “Can she smell a sale a mile away or something?”

“Or something,” Dylan agreed. “Y’see, Vickie has a Divination knack - she can literally smell trouble.”

Doug looked at him warily, “You mean, ‘her spider sense is tingling’?”

“Sort of. Y’see, some psychic talents have to sort of ‘filter’ through more conventional senses - you ‘hear’ voices or sounds, or ‘see’ auras’ and so on. Vickie channels a talent - psi, ESPer, I dunno - for sensing a vague, generic ‘trouble’ through her sense of smell.”

Doug looked pained, “You mean, she has a ‘nose for trouble’?”

“That’s the running joke.”

Vickie took another big whiff. “Bullies. *sniff!* Three of ‘em. Picking on someone, no wait, TWO someones *sniff!* - hold it - Poachers! Two blocks. This way!” Vickie pointed west by northwest and started running in that direction.

“Oh YEAH!” Cassie exulted. “The Nose Knows! Let’s Go!” With that she pelted along after Vickie, with the rest in pursuit.

“What’s her deal?” Doug asked, even though he, Dylan and Jase were running along after the girls.

“Oh,” Jase said, assuming a careful jog, “Cassie has decided that she’s a hotshot ‘Magical Adventuress’, like Xandra Fox on TV - in training. She figures with action like that, the best training in personal experience, so she goes looking for trouble.”

“And I assume that was why she was so amped to get Vickie back?”

Dylan grinned, “You got it.”

“At least she isn’t jaunting,” Jase grumbled.

Vickie led them through the working class neighborhood to an alley between a plumbing supply outlet and a fenced-in storage yard. In the alley were two large boys in fancy pseudo-military uniforms with lots of braid and a girl in a ‘sailor’ uniform with matching braid. The two boys were holding a boy and a girl in Merlin Voc uniforms by twisting their arms behind them. The girl was holding a Luckstone over the boy, and you could see magical energy flowing out of him, and into the stone.

Poachers. Students from other schools, who came onto Merlin Voc ‘turf’ to bushwhack Merlin High students for luck, magical energy, captured goblins, or even matrixes. Of course, Merlin High students also went ‘poaching’ Crowley High and Paracelsus Academy kids, but that didn’t make it right. Without saying anything to warn them, Vickie let rip with a blazing Witchbolt, a homogenous blend of magical energies that wouldn’t be particularly effective against any one defense, but was equally effective against them all. The Witchbolt caught the girl flatfooted and sent her flying.

“Whoa,” Doug said in some awe as the boys caught up with the girls. “Man, that Witchbolt was bright! How can she afford that much energy, this early in a fight?”

Dylan grinned. “That’s my girl! That’s the other reason that Cassie was so hot to get Vickie back - raw power!”

As the two boys - Paracelsus Academy boys, from the uniforms - reacted, Cassie and Yasmin charged past Vickie. Cassie pulled out a cat’s head amulet and shouted, “Bastet Give Me Power!” In mid-stride, she transformed into a grinning cat-girl and gave a vaulting leap onto one of the boys, knocking him away from the girl that he’d been holding.

Yasmin ran up to the other boy, but stopped four steps away. She held herself high, fists raised. Chac, her quatl familiar, swooped down, perched on her shoulder, wings outstretched, and lent her power. “Ogun Fererre Potens!” she grated out. She brought her fists together with a metallic clank, and her skin and hair took on a metallic sheen.

Yasmin stepped forward, with every indication of being both willing and able to pound the crap out of the athletic boy. But before she could lay a hand on him, his familiar, a small and squat bulldog pup stepped forward. In a trice, the pup grew to at least seven feet tall at the shoulder, with a mouth that looked large and strong enough to chew a Buick to bits.

The monster dog advanced on Yaz, but from between her legs, Slyboots zipped through, jumped up and bit the bulldog on the nose. The bulldog yipped, and enraged, it chased after Boots, who didn’t seem too worried about it. She zipped into the storage yard through a gap in the gate, which the bulldog just plowed through. She lead him on a chase through all the stored pipes and other heavy metal objects, which she arranged to fall on him. Finally Boots ran up a telephone pole to the very top. The bulldog was so enraged that he followed her right up, without thinking. Just as the bulldog was at the top, Sheba came swooping down and picked Boots off the pole. The bulldog looked down and suddenly realized that he had no way down. As he dwindled back down to pup-form and whimpered, Boots gave him a ripe juicy razzberry from safe down on the ground.

As Slyboots was taking care of the bulldog, Yasmin advanced on the dog’s master. The boy, who was much larger than the Merlin kid whose arm he’d been twisting, dropped his hostage and went into a crouch. “Talus Repere!” he shouted, and an image of glowing purple eagle’s claws superimposed themselves over his hands.

Seeing this, Doug started to go to his ladylove’s rescue, but Dylan held him back. “Not to worry, Doug. When Yaz has her steel jacket on, it takes a lot more than a punk-ass Eagle’s Claws spell to scratch her.”

Jase made a disgusted noise. “ ‘Talus Repere!’ Man, those Paracelsus creeps! ‘Oh, look at me, I went to Private School, I use LATIN in my spells!’ Gimme a break.”

The boy that Cassie had knocked back reached into his tunic and pulled out an Ofuda. “AGRAVITAS!” Suddenly, everyone and everything within five feet of him began to float up into the air. Cassie and Yaz were caught flat footed, and the three Paracelsus kids were able to get their stances up.

Vickie held back a bit, and Frankie and Trixie pulled up beside her. Trixie prepared a General Deflection spell, and Frankie began manifesting a string of glyphs directly in the air. The Paracelsus boy with the shaven head, the one that Yasmin was facing, slashed at her with his ‘Eagle Claws’. If Yaz had been wearing her blazer, instead of having it tied around her waist, the sleeves would have be shredded. Instead, as Dylan had predicted, her ‘steel jacket’, protected her as she blocked his slashes with her forearms. She slipped inside his guard, grabbed him, and threw him without letting go of his lapels. Her carefully aimed throw carried them both up and out of the Agravitas affect. When they floated outside the anti-grav effect, they both fell a good six feet to the asphalt. Baldy managed to twist out of the way, so that Yaz didn’t land on top of him, but he still handed hard. Yaz, on the other hand, got right up and put him in the arm lock that he’d had on the Merlin boy. She shoved him up against the nearest wall, and made sure that he couldn’t reach for anything, or say anything.

Cassie, on the other hand, was having a ball, exploiting her opponent’s Agravitas spell against him. She was literally bouncing off the walls, scoring claw-strike after claw-strike against her longhaired opponent. Every time that he produced a Hex slip, she’d shred it before he could properly energize it.

While the two ‘front fighters’ were duking it out with the boys, the Paracelsus girl, a bleached blonde cheerleader type, sent a firebolt at Vickie. Vickie deftly blocked it with her Shield talisman, and sent a particularly powerful Witchbolt back at her.

Dylan, who had been watching Vickie carefully, intercepted the stray firebolt with a Containment Sphere. Jase, who was preparing a spell of his own, said aside to Doug, “If you’re gonna hang with Yaz, keep this in mind. These girls aren’t big on being rescued. On the other hand, if we run Damage Control, then nobody gets run in.”

“Besides,” Dylan, his hands free from spelling, jerked a thumb in the direction of a black & white patrol car that was pulling up, “we have other things to handle.”

The patrol car stopped, and two uniformed cops got out, with Department standard Anti-Magic charms well displayed on their chests. Dylan walked toward them, showing that his hands were empty and not doing anything magical. He obviously recognized the officers. “Hey, Nunez, Costello! What’s up?”

“That’s MY question, Welles,” Officer Nunez said, pointing a finger at the melee still in progress. “Care to explain?”

“We interrupted a Poaching in progress. Hey, you’ve seen enough of those, t’know how that goes.”

Nunez gave a grudging nod, but Costello picked up the ‘tough cop’ slack and said, “Maybe, but how much you wanna bet, the three in the fancy vines have another story?”

Dylan acknowledged the point with a nod, but said, “Are you responding to a call, or did you just happen along?”

“Call.”

“What was the complaint?”

“We got a call that two kids were getting jumped by three other kids, with magic.”

Dylan pointed over at the brawl, “Well, if you’ll notice, there are two Merlin kids, still recovering from getting bushwhacked, and three Paracelsus kids, still in fighting trim. Put that together, and what do you get?”

Nunez nodded and said, “Okay, just remember - if you win, no jewelry or money. A Poaching isn’t an excuse for Mugging.”

Dylan sketched a salute. “Understood, Sir!”

Nunez and Costello got back in their patrol car, and called in that the Paranormals wouldn’t be needed. Then they settled in, and waited for the fight to resolve itself.

The Paracelsus blonde intercepted Vickie’s Witchbolt, twisted it into a bolt of lightning, goosed it up a bit and sent it back at her. Vickie caught it easily, turned the lightning bolt into a thunder-arrow and cast it back. This went back and forth for a while, and the blonde began to worry. What was this Merlin Moron DOING? The energy was climbing higher and higher, and she had to devote every bit of her attention to catching it and keeping control of it. Then Vickie turned the blonde’s latest attack into a powerball and sent it back.  Frankie, who had been waiting for just this, formed a particularly sturdy Containment Sphere around the power-ball, just as the blonde caught it. The blonde couldn’t take control of the powerball, and it went off, right in her face.

As the blonde went flying against the alley wall, Longhair gave up on the Hex slips, and activated three Goblin Cards. A Dire Wasp, a Toxic Rooster, and a vague amorphous blob materialized out of the cards.

Roger Wilco, Dylan’s griffin familiar, at his full leonine size, pounced on the Dire Wasp in midair, and slammed it into the ground. Frankie tangled up the Toxic Rooster in a Containment Snare that wrapped its beak tight, keeping it from giving out one of its trademark nauseating belches. Vickie sent a Witchbolt into the blob. But, not only didn’t the bolt harm the blob, it seemed to actually feed it.

The blob stretched wide tendrils at Vickie, Trixie and Frankie. As they reached for the girls the tips became blunt and phallic, with throbbing veins along the shafts.

“You are NOT pointing those things at ME,” Trixie growled glacially, and the ones coming at her wilted.

“Not THEM, Idiot!” Longhair shouted, “Get HER!” He pointed at Yasmin, who had her back to them, keeping Baldy pressed against the brick wall. The monster whipped its naughty tentacles around and wrapped them around Yasmin, pulling them off Baldy. The tentacles grabbed at her greedily, worming their way up her skirt, and one tried to force itself into her mouth.

“Yasmin!” Doug shouted, and bounded forward. He pulled his wooden ‘wand’ from his ‘pocketspace’, and charged it with energy, turning it into a scythe. Doug slashed at the tendrils, as Cassie tore at its main body, and got tangled up in more perverted palps. Vickie and Frankie tried blasting away at it, but it only seemed to get stronger from the input of energy.

“Get Back!” Trixie yelled as she sprang at the sexbeast. In midair, she pulled a large wooden mallet from out of ‘mallet-space’, and then channeled the force of her landing into the mallet blow, right in the sexbeast’s center mass. The tendrils that had Yasmin and Cassie entangled quivered, stiffened and then went limp, letting them free.

Trixie gave a satisfied twirl of the mallet, and sent it back where it had come from. Doug reached into a pocket, pulled out a blank Goblin card and quickly forced the creature into it.

Then from behind them, the assembled friends heard, in eerie unison, “Pathetic Pawns! Pause and peruse the potent peril of the Paracelsus Power Pyramid!” They turned around, and the Paracelsus girl was facing them, with the two boys flanking, a step behind her; they were crackling with magical power, obviously heterodyning the energy to force it up to incredible levels. “Bellarus Astrae Dynamis Phallanxas!” they chorused, and a swarm of Battlestars danced into a rotating circle. The Battlestars spun about ever more quickly, and growing in size and power.

But, even as the Battleswarm was just about to reach critical mass and speed, an Ofuda was thrown from the side and affixed itself to the vortex. “DYNAMIC VORTEX INVERSION!” came a voice from the Merlin boy, who was gesturing subtly. The whirl of Battlestars swirled around the three Paracelsus students, battering them mercilessly, and they were unable to defend themselves, since they were feeding their own energy into the attack.

The crescendo of the attack threw them back in a heap. As they heroically tried to pull themselves together, and the Merlin girl held out a turtle in both hands and shouted, “HYDRO-GEYSER ATTACK!” The turtle opened its mouth, and a fire hose strength gush of water erupted forth, drowning their efforts to recover. The Paracelsus students collapsed in a heap.

The battle over, Dylan and Jase joined them, as Vickie and Trixie helped the boy and girl up. Cassie gave the heap of beaten enemies a sour look. “’Pathetic Pawns! Pause and peruse the potent peril of the Paracelsus Power Pyramid!’ she echoed, “MAN, and I thought that _I_ liked alliteration!”

Doug looked at Dylan and Jase. “You guys put up with stuff like this, all the time?”

Dylan nodded, grinning. “Yep. But there ARE compensations.” The flush of victory on her face, Vickie walked over to Dylan and gave him an especially passionate kiss. While the East Indian girl was usually rather shy about showing her passion, Trixie showed no hesitation about rewarding Jase similarly.

Doug looked over at Yasmin, who was dancing around in a victory dance. She whirled over to him, and picked him up, giving him a truly memorable first kiss. When Yaz put him down, Doug had a dazed look of bliss on his face. Jase chuckled, “Oh yeah, he’s hooked.”

Nunez and Costello got out of their car, and walked over. Costello started taking names, as Nunez checked on the Paracelsus kids.

“Are you okay?” Frankie asked the two kids in Merlin uniforms. “By the way, good work with that ‘Dynamic Vortex Reversion’ spell, ah, what was your name again?”

“It was ‘Dynamic Vortex Inversion’,” the boy said, as he brushed the dirt off his jacket. “And my name is Linus Matherson.”

Frankie and Cassie reacted as one. “ooohhh…! You are so CUTE!” Linus was slender but not scrawny, and he could have posed for a bust of ‘the sensitive young artist’. His features were fine, almost girlishly pretty, but not quite. He had large expressive eyes, a fine nose and a sensitive mouth. His hair was brown and curling, and you thought that he really should have worn it a little longer, to make the most of the curls. There was something about him that said that he felt everything, very intensely. He just sort of made you want to mother him a little.

“And I’m Chelsea Tanner,” the girl said, as she maneuvered herself between Linus and the two girls. She had a fresh, open and very cute face that would have looked a lot better if she’d been smiling instead of scowling at the two girls. “Hey, thanks and all that for the assist, but we gotta get-”

“Not so fast!” Dylan said. The snog-fest had broken down, and the girls were cramming the Dire Wasp and the Toxic Rooster into Goblin Cards. “There’s still the ‘Spoils of Victory’!”

“Spoils of Victory?” Linus echoed curiously.

Jase gestured at the pile of still woozy Paracelsus kids. “Sure! The unwritten rule of Street Duels says that the winner of a duel gets to grab whatever they want off the loser! The Goblins are an automatic loss - if you use ‘em, you can lose ‘em! These bozo were ripping you guys off when we showed up - don’t you want a little of your own back?”

Costello cleared her throat as a warning.

Chelsea poked Linus in the ribs. “Hey, Linus, why don’t you take them for some luck? Heck, you need all the good luck that you can get!”

Linus worried his lower lip. “Well, okay, if you say so, Chel - but not her.” He pointed at the blonde. “One of the guys.”

“Why?” Doug asked curiously as he and Yasmin walked over.

“Because she just contaminated her luck with a hefty helping of bad luck, when she tapped me.”

“Are you having a Bad Luck day?” Yasmin asked.

“No more than usual,” Dylan said as he and Vickie joined them. “That’s ‘Luckless Linus’, the school jinx.”

Chelsea started to come to his defense, but realized that Dylan wasn’t criticizing Linus, just telling it like it is. “Hold on - if Li taps one of these guys for some luck, won’t it be contaminated, just like Li’s bad luck contaminated her luck?”

“What?” Trixie asked, “Don’t you have a Luckstone?”

Linus shrugged. “Never had enough good luck to invest.”

Trixie reached into her purse, and threw him a Luckstone. “Here. Use this. It should keep the luck available for when you need it, and not have it contaminated by your bad luck.” She paused. “Though, if you’re a True Jinx...”

“Not to worry,” Doug said. “If he’s a True Jinx, the bad luck will eventually turn the good luck bad; but meanwhile, if it’s kept isolated from the bad, it should counter a few petals of his bad luck - for a while, anyway.”

Linus nodded, and drained three petals from the bald kid, and four from the longhaired boy. In his hand, the Luckstone glowed a healthy green, and the boy smiled with satisfaction. At his smile, Vickie, Trixie and Yaz all sighed, “He’s so CUTE!”

Dylan, Jase and Doug all rather pointedly helped Chelsea get them busy finding any matrixes of interest. Vickie touched a blank talisman to a bejeweled brooch that the blonde was wearing, and the talisman turned into a similarly bejeweled brooch. “hunh. I wonder what this does?” She activated it, and her hair suddenly arranged itself in a particularly becoming ‘do, and her clothes settled themselves in a stylish way. “Oh! It’s a grooming talsiman!”

She pointed the brooch at Linus, and his hair untangled itself and the dirt fell off of his clothes. She pointed it at Chelsea, and her clothes also became cleaner and neater, and her long ink-black hair fell out of its bedraggled ponytail, and arranged itself loosely around her shoulders.

“Well!” Linus said as he checked the fit of his jacket, “Lucky that you all came along-” He was about to say more, but he stopped, and he and Chelsea just looked at each other.

“How could you have a lucky break?” Chelsea asked, “You never get lucky breaks!”

“Weeeelll...” Doug ventured, scratching the back of his head, as he screwed up his face, “I’m guessing that it was Linus’ bad luck that got you guys jumped. But then, the bitch tapped him for his ‘luck’ and wound up tapping his bad luck - so, he’s nowhere’s near as unlucky, but she’s a TON more unlucky, since her good luck turned bad. My best guess is that it was her bad luck that we showed up, more’n your good luck. Does that make any sense?”

There was a general all around shrug and it was generally agreed that that was as logical as anything. When Luck was involved, logic could get really hairy.

Nunez finished up his preliminary incident report, and said, “Okay, we’ll make sure that these bozos get home, and give them the ‘Magical Assault is not a sport’ lecture. You guys - first, you get that idiot dog down from that telephone pole, and then you fix the damage to that fence.”

When the clean-up was over, Frankie said to Linus and Chelsea, “So, we were headed over to Pop Tate’s™ to hang. Wanna come join?” She jerked a thumb at the boys. “They’re buying.”

“Just a sec.” Linus reached into his commodious backpack, and pulled out a sturdy plank of wood with a Stanz diagram on it. “Lessee now-” he traced his finger counterclockwise around the diagram, and seven petals glowed a sickly blue. “Thought so. Seven petals of bad luck, and seven petals of good luck from those two bozos. Since the good luck is isolated from the bad, they should balance each other out, so I guess that you’re safe.” He turned to Chelsea. “How’s about you, Chelse?”

Chelsea tossed the ponytail that she’d tied her hair into and sniffed, “I guess I’ll have to come along, just to keep these bimbos from dragging you into yet another fight!”

The girls stiffened a bit at being dubbed ‘bimbos’, but the boys steered them in the general direction of Pop Tate’s™.

Pop Tate’s™, as stated before, is a national franchise of fast food outlet-cum-ice cream parlors, patterned after an idealized vision of the soda fountains of the 20’s through 50’s, and presented as the ‘Chocklit Shoppe’ of Archie™ comics. The licensed characters from ‘Riverdale’ were scattered about, but they didn’t overwhelm the place. The place was designed as a hangout for middle school and high school age kids, with large booths that encouraged lounging, and an old-fashioned ‘jukebox’ full of the latest hits.

The managers and assistant managers of these places took courses in ‘customer management’; that is, in how to keep the kids coming in and spending cash, without letting things go to the dogs. One of the first things they teach you at the ‘Customer Management’ classes, is to encourage groups of attractive girls to dance in the dancing area, which is always well visible from the windows. Normally, the managers do this by offering the local ‘alpha’ girl clique reduced costs on food; Samir, the local Pop Tate’s™ manager did it by not making a fuss about the Five Fs bringing their familiars in.

After they settled in and gave their orders, Cassie brought out the Goblin cards, and Trixie broke out her copy of Grainger’s. “Okay, who wants what? We have a Dire Wasp - Grainger’s says that it can be boiled down for an aggression essence, and Paralysis, Pain, and Seek matrixes. We got a Toxic Rooster; not much there, almost pure toxic essence, and almost nothing in the way of recoverable matrixes.”

“So,” Linus said, “reverse the ectoplasmic polarity. You’ll get a universal anti-toxin. Only a fraction of the original essence, but a little should go a long way.”

The sophomores looked at the freshman boy, and sort of blinked as one. “Yeah,” Frankie said, “that would work.”

Jase rolled Linus’ name around on his tongue. “Matherson, Matherson - are you related to Phil Matherson, who was the star Lancer for the Dragons a few years back?”

“Yes,” Linus grated, as though chewing on glass; “he’s my older brother.” For some reason, the mention of Philip seemed to bug Linus, so they didn’t pursue the topic.

Cassie dragged the conversation back to the goblins. “Okay, and last we have - what the heck IS this?”

“Naughty Tentacle Monster,” Trixie said.

“You’re Kidding,” Cassie said, aghast.

“Nope,” Trixie said as she turned the textbook around. “That’s its proper name: ‘Naughty Tentacle Monster’. According to Grainger’s, it’s one of the goblin breeds that’s a direct result of Media Imprinting, from ‘When The TV Blew Up’, and not any fae tribe or daemon clan.”

“Yep,” Jase said, “I’ve heard of ‘em. For some reason, they’re pretty thick around Paracelsus Academy. I think they’re drawn there by those funky ‘sailor suit’ uniforms that the girls wear.”

“Anyway,” Trixie continued, “the Naughty Tentacle Monster is almost pure Male Potency, and-”

“MINE!” Yasmin cut her off and grabbed the card.

“Don’t you want to know what matrixes it has?”

“Well, sure, but no matter what they are, this one is MINE!”

“Busy night planned, Yaz?” Cassie murmured with a wry smile.

Yasmin tapped the card, “You heard her - ‘Pure Male Potency’ - if I reverse the ectoplasmic polarity on his sucker, then it’s pure FEMALE potency. I figure that I could brew up a potion to keep ‘Oswaldo’ in his place for a LONG time with that.”

Linus and Chelsea looked confused, so Vickie explained Yasmin’s ‘relationship’, such as it was, with ‘Oswaldo’.

“So, you mean, you’re really a guy?” Linus said, with an odd note to his voice.

“Well, Yes and No,” Yasmin hedged. “I prefer to think of it as a magically correctable birth defect.” Doug wrapped an arm around her, to show where he stood on the matter.

Chelsea apparently was uncomfortable with the issue and asked, “Hey, Trixie, is it? How did you take out that Naughty Tentacle Monster with one blow?”

“Simple!” Trixie bubbled. She held up both hands, and the mallet re-appeared. “The VirgilCo™ ‘BoyBopper©’!” All the boys recognized it, and instinctively pulled back a bit. “It doesn’t do that much real physical damage, but it magically affects beings with a Yang bias, like boys - or Naught Tentacle Monsters.”

“Is it all right that we took ALL those matrixes from those creeps?” Chelsea asked. “Isn’t there some sort of unwritten code about that?”

“Oh, there’s an unwritten understanding between Merlin and Crowley Voc, across town,” Cassie explained. “When Poachers come into the other school’s turf, they can take either some energy, some luck, or ONE matrix; sort of like an unofficial duel. If they get busted, they stand to lose the same, like a wager. BUT, if they take more than that, then there’s unspoken permission for the victim’s school to send a team of their best and baddest into the poacher’s school’s turf, pound the crap out of him, and shake him down for EVERYTHING. Of course, there are guys, guys like ‘Jawbreaker’ Johnstone, who break that truce on a pretty regular basis.” Linus’ eyes narrowed at J.J. Johnstone’s name. “The problem is, they’re tough enough to take out hunting parties. Of course, we don’t help ol’ Jawbreaker when they come for him, but then, we don’t help the hunters, either.”

“Yeah,” Frankie said, “and it’s not like Crowley doesn’t have it’s own ‘Brigand Kings’, like ‘Old Nick’ Stanislaw, or ‘Pretty Poison’ Pannini.”

“And you can’t set the devils against each other-“ Doug sighed, “-‘Jawbreaker’ and ‘Old Nick’ are buds, and I think that J.J. and ‘Pretty Poison’ used to date for a while.”   

“Anyway,” Cassie took the floor back, “Paracelsus isn’t a part of that understanding. If we send a hunting party into their turf to tackle a Brigand, they call out the reserves. Can’t have the Proles go around beating up the Elite, and all that. So, when they come poaching on our turf, we slap them down HARD.”

Dylan looked around, “Hey, Frankie, I just noticed. Where’s your familiar?”

Frankie shrugged. “Dewie was having a bad stretch, so I hadda leave him at home.”

Cassie leaned over to Linus and Chelsea and whispered, “Her familiar, Dewie, is a Skye Terrier, and he has sort of a...problem with the whole ‘fetch’ thing.”

“You mean he doesn’t like being a Guardian Spirit?”

“No, not that kind of ‘fetch’ - I mean, the ‘throw the stick and he brings it back’ kind of fetch. He’s a fetch-aholic.”

Trixie made an exception for her ‘the boys pay’ rule, and sprang for the jukebox. The tunes were pure bubble gum, but at least you could dance to it. Vickie was dancing with Dylan, when she slipped on a dab of ice cream on the floor. ‘Weird,’ she thought to herself, ‘I’m supposed to be having a lucky day! Maybe Linus isn’t as non-contagious as we thought!’

“Just a second, Babe!” she told Dylan. She went over to her book bag and pulled out a book with a Stanz diagram. She checked her luck, and she still had six petals left. But, when she reversed the diagram, three petals glowed blue.

Frankie looked over her shoulder. “What’s this?”

“I think that Linus might be leaking bad luck.”

Frankie shook her head. “I don’t think so, at least not this soon. And if it had come from Linus, it wouldn’t be so neatly separate. Besides, you got knocked out of the ring today, remember? Besides fueling the effect that turns you female, Feedback can also generate Bad Luck.”

Vickie’s face went blank. “Oh, yeah, right. So much was going on, I spaced on that.” Then she spotted a chunky middle aged man peering in the window. “Well, waddya know? I really IS my lucky day. Yo, Frankie, can I borrow your luck ward charm?”

“What luck ward charm?” Frankie asked innocently.

“The one that you slipped on your wrist, as soon as you figured out that Linus was a super-jinx.”

Frankie slipped Vickie the amulet under the table. “Just get it back to me, ‘kay?”

Vickie smirked, “What? Nervous?”

“Hey, he’s a nice guy, and really cute, but we’re talking about a jinx! And what do you want it for?”

“Oh, I’m just gonna take care of a little family business.”

“This isn’t gonna be something that a Grand Jury is gonna be asking questions about is it?”

Vickie patted her cheek. “Not to worry. It’ll never go to court.” Vickie tucked her book under her arm and went to the Ladies’ Room. Once in a stall, she manifested the bad luck petals on the Stanz diagram. She touched the rooster’s claw connected to her Banestone on each of the three petals. Then she touched the Banestone to the edge of the diagram and ran it around its circumference. Ten Petals glowed blue.

Woof. TEN Petals! Thank God for Uncle Kyle.

Vickie pulled a cheap and rather tacky Luckstone with a four-leaf clover design from her purse. The Luckstone had been a gift from her Uncle Kyle, and she suspected that he had some ulterior motive in giving it to her; he usually did. She touched the almost fully charged Banestone to the Luckstone, and gave the ill fortune inside a gentle push. Banestones are much more tightly warded, to completely keep the bad luck inside, whereas the Luckstone is designed with much looser wards, so that the luck can be tapped into whenever the user wants it. So, the bad luck flowed easily into the Luckstone, which glowed the indicative eerie blue. Well, we can’t have that! Vickie carefully kept Frankie’s luck ward between her and the Luckstone, and wrapped a minor illusion around it; now, the Luckstone glowed a lucky green. Smiling, Vickie slipped the luck ward in her purse, and put the Luckstone on top it.

Well, Uncle Kyle should have seen Slyboots out in the main restaurant by now, so she returned to her date. Sure enough, there he was sitting on a stool by the counter. Hugh, the counterman, was diligently cleaning the counter near him, and Samir, the franchise manager was obviously keeping an eye on him from the door of his office. “It’s cool, guys!” she said chipperly, “He’s my uncle.”

She sat down. “Hey, Unca Kyle! Whuzzup?”

Kyle O’Bryan was the beefy, cherubic faced kind of Irishman, with curly red hair completing the image. He grinned at her ingratiating. “Vickie, darlin’! I’ve been lookin’ all over for you!” Then he looked around at the kids watching him. “errr...Could we take this outside? There’s something that I need to talk to you about.”

Once they were outside, Kyle opened with, “Vickie, you know that you’ve always been my favorite niece-”

‘And if I ever hear that you try this kind of crap with Megan’, Vickie thought to herself, ‘I’ll make sure that you have an allergic reaction to alcohol for the rest of your life!’

“-and you know that I’d never come to you, if it weren’t an absolute emergency-“

‘In other words, you think that you can make some quick cash,’ she thought.

Kyle took a very deep breath, and jumped right in. “I was wondering if you could...y’know...loan me...a few petals of luck. I’m really up against it, and I NEED some major good luck to come my way.”

Vickie reached into her purse and pulled the crocked Luckstone out by its rabbit foot. Then she paused and gave a deep sigh. “No, Uncle Kyle, I can’t. You know that if they ever caught you with a Luckstone, you’d be lucky if they just broke your legs.”

“Not to worry, darlin’!” Kyle held her by the shoulders. “If I have enough good luck, they won’t catch me!”

Vickie shook her head. “No, I can’t risk it. Whatever you’re into, you’ll have to work it out the hard way.” She tucked the Luckstone back into her purse.

Kyle tried to convince her, but she stood firm. “At least give me a big hug,” he said, “to show there’s no hard feelings.”  

Vickie gave her uncle a tight squeeze, and he went off with a merry wave. Vickie watched him go off, with a spring in his step. Only when he rounded the corner did she check her purse, to find the crocked Luckstone gone. She smiled.

Kyle O’Bryan was a fink, and she knew it. He regarded his kith and kin as a resource to be exploited for his benefit. When Vic had been ‘infected’ with the Magic Vector, he’d thought that God had handed him a money tree. Every other week, he had yet another big idea for making lots of money quickly, which always depended on Vic. So far, none of his harebrained schemes had gotten Vic arrested, but Kyle and Vic were the only ones that didn’t seem to understand that it was only a matter of time.

On one level, Vickie hoped that Uncle Kyle might walk away from whatever he was up to with a rude awakening, and shape up. On a more pragmatic level, she’d settle for him not bugging her, trying to mooch luck off of her.

*****

An hour later, the party broke up, and they each started their own way home. "Want a ride home, Vickie?” Dylan offered.

“Sure!”

On the sidewalk outside, Dylan reached into his schoolbag, pulled a collapsible rig out, and telescoped it out to its full length with a snap. The best description of it might be a collapsible skateboard without wheels. It had two large discs at either end, two more discs in the middle and a standing platform connecting them. The two matching discs had ‘Lift’ matrixes arranged around the Word of Flight in the Middle Script, and the middle discs had a ‘Protection’ matrix arranged around the Word of Haven, and a ‘Telekinesis’ matrix arranged around the Word of Control, both in the Low Script. It was called a Zipboard, a cross between a Flying Carpet and skateboard.

Dylan stepped on top of it, and it rose eight or so inches off the ground. When he was sure of his balance, Dylan offered a hand to Vickie, who climbed on behind him and wrapped her arms around his middle. When they were both sure of their balance, Dylan sent the board sliding off at about ten MPH. The board could go a lot faster than that, and fly a lot higher, but Dylan didn’t want to get in trouble with Vickie’s parents, so he kept it low and slow.

Or, at least as low and slow as you could go, and still get a squeal out of a pretty girl.

*****

Dylan set Vickie down in front of her house, and gave her a quick goodbye kiss before zipping off.

Vickie went around the back, and came in the kitchen door. Mom was already back from her job, and starting on dinner. “Oh, back already?”

Vickie set her books down, and started peeling the potatoes. “Of course I’m back, I called you, didn’t I?”

“I wouldn’t put it past you, in your male side, to call and disguise your voice.”

“Well, I’d think that after you helped Dylan set Vic up-”

Mrs. O’Bryan raised an eyebrow. “Oh, Dylan’s back of this, eh?”

“You mean that you didn’t call him, and give him a head’s up?”

“I called him,” Mrs. O’Bryan said, with a slightly injured tone, “to let him know, so there’d be no ugly scenes at school.” She waved a wooden spoon at Vickie, “I wish that you’d get it through _both_ your heads, that your father and I are not playing favorites. AND,” she leaned down slightly and fixed her ‘daughter’ with a glare, “I wish that the head that I’m talking to, would get it through that thick noggin of hers, that she can’t just leave Vic behind. I realize that it’s tempting just to leave that part of you in the dust, but if the part of you that’s lagging behind doesn’t shape up, he’ll drag BOTH of you down with him.”

“And what am _I_ supposed to do about it?” Vickie asked mulishly.

“Well _I_ don’t know!” Mrs. O’Bryan said, waving the spoon in the air. “You figure it out! BUT-" she took Vickie by the shoulders, “-you mark my words, if the two parts of you keep drifting apart, you might very well really just split into two different people - and that CAN’T be good.”

“You’re right,” Vickie grumped, “he’d probably turn into the twin brother from hell.” Mrs. O’Bryan almost had to physically restrain herself from knouting Vickie on the head with the wooden spoon.

*****

Aunt Faythleen breezed in, as usual, far too late to be of any help with the dinner. When she saw Vickie, she blurted out, “Oh, you’re back! Does this mean...” she shut her mouth before she could completely put her foot in it.

“Not to worry, Aunt Fay,” Vickie sighed. She went over to her book bag and pulled out a clear plastic bottle of a pale pink lotion.

Faythleen took the bottle with a smirk. “Thanks, Vickie, you’re my favorite niece.”

“HEY!” Megan yipped from her place at the table.

“I THOUGHT I told you not to make those potions for her,” Mom said warningly.

“I made one for you, too,” Vickie said, as she pulled another pink bottle out of her schoolbag. Mrs. O’Bryan gave her a warning glare, but took the bottle anyway.

*****

After dinner was the parent mandated study period, with Rick, Jon, Vickie and Megan working on the dining room table. Vickie offered to help Megan with her Arithmetic homework, but Jon wouldn’t let her.

“I’m not going to use magic!” Vickie complained. "I just happen to know this stuff!”

“Yes,” Jon said placatingly, “BUT Megan’s teachers know that you’re a magicker. And it’s best all around, if Meg’s able to say in complete honesty, that you didn’t help her in any way, so there’s no way that we can be accused of ‘cheating’ with magic.” Jon looked a Megan and said, “Now, Meg, if Mrs. Landau asks you if Vickie helped you, you say that Vickie offered, and I told her that she shouldn’t. Roger?”

“Roger!” Megan chirped back.

“If that’s the case,” Vickie said snippishly, “then I’ll go and do my homework up in my room. It’s Magic homework, and you might all catch something.” As she mounted the back stairs, someone threw a paper airplane at her head.

*****

After finishing her homework, Vickie got all the beauty supplies that Vic had dumped out of the wastebasket, and began her evening beauty regimen. After scouring her face, she started combing out her hair. She had begun when there was a timid knock at the door. “Come in, Meg.”

Megan opened the door. She had Slyboots in her arms. “How did you know it was me?”

“Everyone else in this house has a knock like thunder. You want someone to help you brush your hair?”

“I’ll brush yours, in return!” Meg offered hopefully. Megan found that she really liked having a big sister, even though her friends with big sisters were always complaining about them.

Vickie gestured to the side of the bed, and she started counting out strokes with the brush. As was usual with this arrangement, they wandered through a lot of girl talk. And, as usually happened when they got together like this, Megan asked it she could sleep with Vickie in her bed.

Vickie sighed. “Well, okay, why not?” As Megan gave a squeal and crawled under the sheets, Vickie looked at Slyboots. *You suggested this, I take it?*

*What? Two warm bodies in a bed is better than one!*

*****

The next morning, Dylan picked Vickie up on his zipboard, and the extended Five Fs were able to hang out for a while before school. Teachers welcomed her ‘back’, and her high school life went on as it usually did, in the breaks between the times when she was Vic.

Then a thin, very intense looking boy came up to her before History class. She recognized him as Riley Comstock, one of Chelkiss’ buddies. “Hey, Vickie, could I ask you something?”

Vickie’s ‘nose for trouble’ kicked in. “errr...Sure, Riley. What is it?”

“Well, it’s about Darryl.” Riley handed her an envelope. On reflex, Vickie checked Riley for any hostile intent. While there was some, it wasn’t directed at her, but at someone not present.

She took the envelope, and immediately knew that she’d been had. She felt a cage form around her, and shrink to where it formed a small ball in the center of her chest, trapping the Feedback force that turned her female. She’d only been awake once or twice when the feedback gave out, but she knew exactly what was going on.

Even as she was wrapping her head around the idea, her perspective twisted around, her associations realigned, and her entire mindset shifted, even as her body did the same thing. Suddenly, Vic found himself back in the saddle, large and in charge.

He bolted out of his chair, grabbed Riley by the lapels and slammed him against the classroom wall. “Okay, Comstock,” Vic grated, “it’s not like I’m not grateful and all that, but what are you up to?”

Comstock glared back, “I wanted to challenge you, O’Bryan, and I couldn’t do that while Vickie was blocking the way.”

“Challenge me?” Vic raised an eyebrow. “What for?”

“What FOR?” Comstock yelled back. “For the shitty stunt that you pulled on Darryl, you shitwad!’

Vic smirked. “Okay, I can respect that. So, gimme the challenge.”

Comstock smiled back. “I already did. It’s in the same envelope as the Hex slip. It’s over there,” Comstock paused and smirked, “next to your PURSE.”

Vic looked down, and realized that he was still wearing a school uniform - the GIRLS school uniform. With a skirt. That barely covered his ass. He dropped Comstock, went to his desk for his stuff, and stalked out of the room, to go change clothes. From the hallway, the other students heard, “WHAT? You never seen a guy in a skirt before? You NEW here or sum’thin’?”

*****

Vic caught Big Ben and Long Tom at Tom’s locker. “Vic! You’re back already! Wha’hoppen?”

Vic grinned. “Guys, I think we have a whole new ball game.” He held up the Hex slip. “Take a look at this.”

Ben and Tom gave it a cautious once over. “Looks like a Designator for someone’s Matrix Talisman.”

Vic nodded. “Exactimundo. Riley Comstock, one of Chelkiss’ little nerdoid buddies, got all pissy about what I did to his buddy yesterday, and decided that he couldn’t wait a week to get back at me. So, he slipped ‘Vickie’ this hex.”

Big Ben looked puzzled. “But how? From what I heard, you can’t just get rid of Feedback. It’s like getting rid of recoil from a gun, or a hangover - you gotta deal with it, one way or annuther." It was the most they they’d heard from him at one time in a year.

Vic nodded. “Good t’hear that you’ve been listening in class. No, I don’t think that he just got rid of it. I think that he sort of ‘bottled up’ the Feedback within some kind of containment effect. It’s still there, I can feel it, but it isn’t affecting me.”

Long Tom nodded. “Sort of like a Banestone. I wonder why no one’s thought of that before?”

Vic grinned. “Hey, that’s what we have Nerds for - to come up with fun stuff, so the rest of us don’t have to. Anyway, Tom, I’m gonna need you to do something.”

“What?”

“You gotta tag Comstock with a challenge slip.”

“Comstock? Is he the guy who did this?”

“Yeah, he already challenged me.”

Tom gave Vic a worried look. “If yer already gonna fight ‘im, WHY do I gotta tag ‘im?”

“Because, Doofus, he wimped out on the terms of the wager - check it out! He wants Chelkiss' Shield talisman back, but he’s only risking a stupid Fact-Finding talisman, that he’s probably already upgraded past. I want that ‘Bottle’ talisman. No, I NEED that Bottle talisman! So, when you tag him, Tom, make the terms identical, except leave it an open ‘matrix for matrix’ wager.”

Tom nodded. “Sure, no prob. Hey... Comstock...wasn’t he one of the...” he reached into his locker and pulled out a notebook.

Vic took the notebook with a predatory grin on his face. “Precisely.”

“He’s still pretty tough. At least, in the Ring.”

Vic’s grin went foxy. “True, BUT there’s one little thing that he doesn’t know. Check out what I found out in the locker room.” Vic held out his hands, as Vickie had done for Miss Firth the day before, and as had happened with Vickie, twin balls of silver-blue flame appeared.

“Whooaahhh...” Long Tom and Big Ben cooed in unison.

With a flick of his hands, Vic dismissed the fireballs.

“I thought that you could only do that as Vickie,” Tom said, slighly awed.

“So did I. I figure that we - Vickie and I - can use the Feedback as a source of power, or use the Feedback to tap into some other source of power. But since I turn into Vickie whenever I have any Feedback, I couldn’t tap into it. BUT, since it’s safely bottled up inside me...” He produced the fireballs again.

Long Tom gave his friend a thumbs up. “I’ll have ol’ Comstock loaded by the lunch bell, fer shure.”

*****

As he entered the central courtyard, Vic saw Lexie with a few friends. He gave the line for the Rings a quick look, and figured that he had time. He sauntered up to them and said, “Hey, Lex.”

She greeted him with surprise. “Oh, you’re back already?”

‘Well, I suppose that it’s an improvement on just ‘you’re back’, I suppose,’ He muttered to himself. “Yeah, I just wanted to stop and apologize for what my evil twin sister did to you yesterday.”

Lexie’s face went dark, “You remember that?”

“Vaguely,” he said evasively. “I remember the basic gist, but no real details,” he lied. In truth, he remembered every little bit of what little he’d seen, and liked it.

“So, how long are you around for, this time?” she asked, as if he were renting a room.

Before he could quip in reply, a voice from behind him blared. “Oh God! What are YOU doing here?” Vic turned around to see Cassie, standing a few feet away, with Sheba on her shoulder.

The sphinx leaned forward and said, “The egg is unbroken, yet here is the chick!”

“No,” Vic corrected her, “here is NOT the chick, but the dude!”

“I thought that you’d be in the bag for at least a week!” Cassie continued.

“Well, it just shows that you can’t keep a good man down!” Vic beamed back at her.

“And what does that have to do with you, runt?” Cassie shot back.

Lexie put herself between them, and lead Vic off. “So, you were saying?”

“Well, I have sort of a major favor to ask you.”

Lexie sighed, “Please, I told you - I can’t be seen dating someone who’s doing as poorly in the Ring as you are. You went a long way toward getting there, yesterday, until Hammersmith shot you down, but-”

Vic held up a hand. “Not a date. Though, if this goes well, I’ll be well on my way to getting to a place where I can be able to do just that.” He explained about Comstock, how he trapped the Feedback, and the upcoming duel.

“Trapping feedback? Interesting...” Lexie mused. “But what does that have to do with me?”

Vic kept leading them toward the dueling ring. “Well, if I win this duel, I’ll be able to change back from my feminine form by using the ‘Bottle’ talisman to trap the feedback. BUT, if I’m Vickie, that’s the last thing that she’ll want to do. So, _I_ can’t carry the talisman. Welles and her ‘Five F’ buddies pretty much have Ben and Tom outclassed - all they’d have to do is slip one or the other of ‘em a challenge slip, and they’d have the ‘Bottle’ talisman in their hands, and I’m back to square one, but if-”

“But if _I_ am the one holding on to it...” Lexie picked up the train of thought.

“I have complete confidence in your cunning and skill, to keep that vital resource out of enemy hands,” Vic finished for her.

Lexie cocked a roguish eye at him. “And what do I get out of all of this?”

“Well, first and foremost, you get some payback on Vickie, for what she pulled yesterday. Also, in return for such a vital service, I would be personally obligated to provide, oh say, whatever frozen dessert appeals to you at Pop Tate’s™?” Vic finished with a sweeping bow.

Lexie laughed out loud. There was something about the glib rogue type that appealed to her, the kind of guy who could turn her doing him a favor into an excuse to ask for a date was just irresistible. “Very well, Sir Gallant!” she giggled, “But first, you have to win!”

“Not to worry, “ he grinned back at her, “I’m on a roll!”

*****

Vic saw Comstock and the rest of his nerd-clique, less Chelkiss, standing in line for the opposite side of Ring C.  The ‘Fab Five’, as they styled themselves, were as close to a textbook cross-section of high school outcasts as you could get, without actually sitting down and figuring ‘we need one’a these and one’a those’. Chelkiss was the comic book dork. Comstock was the video game geek. Leslie Turnbow was the D&D nerdette; worse, she was the ‘Romantic Fantasy’ nerdette. She was even wearing a wreath of flowers in her hair, over her school uniform! Robin Winkler was the ‘Magical Girl’ anime geek. And, lastly, Lloyd Cunliffe was the Tech geek. In any other school, they’d be a pack of victims, scurrying out of the way of higher life forms. But Merlin was a magic school, and here they were a group of Top Twenty duelists. And they were looking to get back at him for humiliating Chelkiss.

Which only meant that Vic would score some serious Rep points, for slapping the rest of them back into their proper place.

Comstock kicked up a fuss about the terms imposed by the second challenge slip, but Kubasch, the Ring C ref, wasn’t having any of it. Value for value, he said.

Comstock gave up and stumped over to his position in the ring. The Ref gave him a minute to get his gear ready, and the duel began. Comstock was wearing a portable video gaming rig, with a ‘power glove’ and a display visor. There were ‘technomancers’, who were researching how to use technology to use magic, but Comstock wasn’t one of those. He was just a kid who exploited the synergy of image, association and response to ‘fast-cast’ spells. But, he could cast those spells very quickly. He let off a quick barrage of Battlestars, which Vic rather casually blocked with the Shield talisman. Vic rather perfunctorily let off a glowing witchbolt, which Comstock also blocked easily. They jabbed at each other for a bit, back and forth. For a magical duel, it was rather boring.

Then the tenor changed dramatically. Suddenly, it was like no matter how fast Comstock fired, Vic was a step head of him. Every attack that Comstock shot, Vic turned against him, with a Witchbolt of his own, thrown in for good measure. Those attacks that Vic didn’t volley back at Comstock, he avoided easily and stepped into a crack in Comstock’s defenses to deliver a Witchbolt or Battlestar. Comstock got so rattled that he made the mistake of laying down a stream of ‘suppression fire’ Battlestars, hoping to get a breather that would let him get back on the offensive. Taking a cue from memories of that Paracelsus trio yesterday, Vic swept up the stream of Battlestars into a constantly growing circle. He held the whirling circle until he couldn’t hold it anymore, and threw it at Comstock as a single overwhelming onslaught. Comstock’s rig was ripped apart, and Riley himself was down for the count.

When he came to, Comstock handed over the ‘Bottle’ talisman without a gripe, but Vic could see promises of more payback in his eyes.

As they walked away together toward the cafeteria, Lexie said, “Okay, go ahead, you know that you’re busting at the seams to tell me.”

“Tell you what?” Vic said innocently.

Lexie sighed, “How you managed to get Comstock clocked so perfectly. C’mon, I know that you’re just itching to brag about it, and for once, I’m actually interested.”

Vic laughed. “Okay, okay! Well, I beat him the same way that I beat Chelkiss yesterday. The only way that I’m ever gonna get any real power is if I do a lot better in the duels, everyone knows that. Not to mention other benefits.” He leered at Lexie.

“Yeah, yeah, details, details!”

“Okay, I remember watching an old Martial Arts movie - I forget the title - where Revered Master Whatsisname said, ‘The strength of a style is that it focuses, giving form. The more distinct the style, the greater the strength. The weakness of a style is that it focuses, giving form. The more distinct the style, the greater the weakness.’ It took me a while to figure out that what he was saying was, that by focusing, a style concentrates on a few things, leaving others weak. Also, it makes them predictable. Chelkiss’ weakness was that he patterned his best effects and tools on comic book stuff, which usually had some weakness or another that I was able to research.”

“And Comstock?” Lex asked, as they got in line for lunch.

“Hey, Comstock’s into video games! Video games are all basically mathematical models, using set, predictable progressions. You know how it is with video games - the first few run throughs are always full of surprises, but then you learn what’s going on, and what to expect. So, I had the boys find out what games Comstock has in that rig of his, and they figured out what effects he was using.”

Lexie’s eyebrows shot up. “What? Those two lumps?”

“Hey, you’re talking about my BOYS!” Vic said with mock severity. “Besides,” he admitted, “it was video games, something I could actually trust them to get right.”

Lexie gave him a grin. “Okay, so you’re slick. Now what?”

“NOW,” Vic handed her the Bottle talisman, “we wade through the rest of school. After school, I take you to Pop Tate’s™, and we discuss how I can repay you for the invaluable service that you’re providing. For instance, has Donna Sachs been giving you any shit recently?”

Lexie smiled voluptuously. “Hmmm...no, not since she started putting her foot in her mouth. But I’m sure that we could work up some quid pro quo.” As much as Lexie liked putting things over on people, there was something so much more satisfying about tangling with a guy who was at least as smart as you were.

*****

Dylan caught up with Cassie as she came walking out of the Main Entrance. “Hey, Cassie! What’s up? I saw Vic - not Vickie - in Fifth Period today!”

“I know, I know!” Cassie shot back. “I saw the loser at lunch today, and he wasn’t exactly forthcoming, if you know what I mean. But, right after that, he went and took out Riley Comstock in a duel, and I heard from a girl who has History with Vickie, that Comstock had something to do with it.”

Dylan nodded. “Make the calls, round up the troops. I think that we gotta find out what Comstock did.”

*****

They didn’t need to look that hard. Chelkiss was all but dragging Comstock by his ear, when they found Dylan. “Hey, Welles! We gotta talk!”

Dylan glared past Chelkiss at Comstock. “What did you do to Vickie, you Idiot?”

Chelkiss held up a calming hand, “He thought that he was doing the right thing by me. He figured that he had to change Vickie back to Vic, so that he could challenge the asshole in the Ring.”

“I still don’t know how he managed to slap me down like that,” Comstock said mulishly, his hands in his pockets.

“That’s NOT the POINT!” Dylan shouted. “What did you DO to her?”

“Chill out!” Chelkiss said. “For a while, we’ve been working on a way of coping with the effects of Feedback. Our thought was that the feedback could be contained and slowly dispersed at a level that you could cope with more effectively. But there was a problem with the containment that we came up with. It contained the feedback, but it didn’t disperse. It was just as powerful when the containment collapsed as it was when it was jarred up. If anything, it was worse, because it hit all at once.”

“And what does that have to do with anything?” Dylan rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“‘Vickie’ is basically Victor’s anima, right? Like a few other students here, his ‘feminine side’ gets empowered and manifested by the power of the feedback. When the feedback gets contained, the power that basically brings her into being stops, and she becomes Victor again. So, as long as the feedback is contained, he’s gonna stay Victor.”

Dylan nodded. “So, if we trick Vic into creating more feedback, it will turn him back into Vickie, just like always.”

Chelkiss shook his head. “Phenomenally BAD idea, Welles. From what I noticed while she was changing after Vic’s duel with Hammersmith yesterday, Vickie interfaces with her own feedback in ways that normal Mages don’t. It may be her way of coping with the feedback, I don’t know. But, if you create enough feedback to change her back, while she still has another almost full charge contained within her, the containment could collapse.”

Dylan grimaced. “And she’d have to deal with all of that, all at once.” He looked at Chelkiss. “How bad do you think that would be?”

Chelkiss shrugged. “I dunno. But given the way that high volume feedback works on most people, I sorta doubt that she’s wanna survive to find out.”

Dylan perked up. “What about disrupting the containment?”

Chelkiss nodded. “Smart thinking, Welles. I can see why Vickie likes you. As a matter of fact,” Chelkiss reached into his ‘utility belt’, “I was thinking along the same lines.” He produced the Pass-Wall talisman, and explained what it did. “I think that this will solve the problem. Tap old carrot-top with this, and he isn’t our problem - at least not until the feedback runs its course anyway.” He handed it to Dylan.

“Damn nice of you, Chelkiss, to part with a nice piece of work like this,” Dylan said with grudging admiration.

Chelkiss shrugged. “Yesterday, after Vic beat me in the ring, Vickie came and apologized for the way that her worse half acted. She showed me respect. You don’t wuss out on people who show you respect. Anyway, Vickie and I put it together yesterday in Chant Lab. I figure that I owe it to her to get her back to herself. If you can round up some goblins with the Pass-Door power, I should be able work up a few more, in case Vic figures out what we’re trying to pull. Vic may be a punk, but he’s a sneaky punk.”

Dylan pulled out his cell phone, and hit speed dial. “You’ll have all the goblins you need, whether they have Pass-Door or not. Yer a dude, Chelkiss. If you ever need anything, just ask, and we’ll do what we can.”

“Just get that ratsass Victor off campus, PDQ - I think he has the rest of my crew taped, like he did with Riley here. If he can afford to lose a few duels from now on, I think that he’s gonna try and build up his rep and his arsenal by hitting us for our most effective talismans.”

Dylan nodded. “If so, then we use that. Can we count on you guys? We got an alliance here?”

Comstock stepped forward and stuck out his hand. “We got a deal.”

*****

Their date at Pop Tate’s™ had been a gas. As much as Vic liked putting things over on people, there was something so much more satisfying about tangling with a girl who was at least as smart as you were. Vic had walked Lexie home, and angled for a kiss. Lexie had put him off, but he could tell that he was on the way. He ambled back home and was greeted with, “What? You’re back already?”

“Put it on a sampler, why don’t you?”

*****

Vic took it for granted that his services wouldn’t be required, during the family study hour, so he didn’t offer.

At the end of a hard night’s video gaming, Vic did the evening ablutions thing, and as headed back to his room, he spotted Megan at his door, holding a book. Little sisters coming out of your room with a book is NOT a good thing, not when you’re a magicker. For all he knew, she was looking for a way to hex him back into Vickie. And, hey, he was finally getting a romantic life, he was NOT about let the little crumb-cruncher spoil it!

Megan ducked down the back stairs, but really! She should have known that she couldn’t get away from Vic. Not when he could just jaunt down one story ahead of her. Still, Vic had to give the munchkin her props - she was a slippery little cuss! Sort of did him proud, in a way.

Finally, he had her cornered. She was huddled behind the sofa, and Dad was roaring to know what was going on. “She’s got one of my magic books, Pop. And you know that she’s not allowed to-” Vic grabbed the book and tore it from Megan’s hands as he was speaking. But, the second that he took it from her hands, he felt a magic lash out at him, and the reservoir that kept the feedback contained within him give. The all too-familiar wave of feedback washed over him, and before he could completely wrap his head around it, he was Vickie again.

“What?” Vickie bleated, “What just happened? I was just in History class, and Riley Comstock was just...” she trailed off, completely croggled.

“What?” Moira asked her daughter, “You don’t remember coming back this afternoon as Vic?”

“_no_.”

“But you always had a sense of where you’d been and what Vic had been up to, before.”

“Yeah...” Then it clicked. “Of course! The Sigil of Saturn!”

“The Sigil of Saturn,” Moira responded, not getting it.

“It’s a mystic mark I used to keep something from Vic.”

Moira crossed her arms and raised a single eyebrow. “And now, it’s come around to bite you in the ass.”

Vickie ignored this snipe, and kneeled down to ask her sister, “Meg, what did you DO?”

Megan opened the textbook and showed Vickie a Hex slip. “Dylan gave me this, to pass along to you. I dunno what it does.”

Vickie looked at her mother, who was already dialing the phone.

*****

“Vickie! You’re back!”

“Back? I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that I was GONE! What happened?” Dylan explained about Comstock’s plan for revenge. “Remind me to challenge Comstock, and hand him his ass in the ring,” Vickie growled.

“I wouldn’t do that, Honey. Riley, Chelkiss and his crew are on our side in this. I would give you more information, but I don’t want *Ahem!* ‘anyone listening over your shoulder’-”

“It’s cool, Dyl - Vic can’t hear us. Chelkiss and I put up a Sigil of Saturn to keep my dumber half-”

“VICKIE!” her mother said warningly.

“er- to keep _Vic_ from learning about a new matrix I got this morning. It seems that it’s still up and running. I can’t remember a thing that happened in the last ten hours, when Comstock pulled his little trick. If I can’t remember anything that happened to Vic, then he shouldn’t remember anything that happens to me.”

“Interesting,” Dylan mused. “Okay, we meet in front of Hilda, as per uze, and we talk strategy.”

“Strategy? What for?”

“You must still be dizzy from ‘waking up’ - your loser half probably has plans for keeping you on the sidelines, and if this Sigil of Saturn is working, then you wouldn’t know anything about it, would you?”

“oohhh...Right, right! MAN, I am not used to this, not being able to remember what Vic did! Y’know, I’m beginning to think that the Sigil of Saturn wasn’t such a good idea.”

“HAH!” her mother said triumphantly.

“Yeah, well,” Dylan said consolingly, “we’ll make the best of it. But, we have an ace that Vic probably never thought of.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, according to Chelkiss, the containment isn’t perfect. And you can’t just bottle up a primal force like Feedback that way. That means that Vic is gonna have to start dealing with some nasty side effects, while you won’t. So, whether we find out where Vic’s keeping that containment matrix first, or he just gives up, not wanting to deal with the side effects, before that; either way, we win in the end. So, just keep the chin up, Kid.”

Vickie gushed a few thanks, but the fact that her mother was right there, listening sort of put a stopper on any gooey baby talk on the phone. She put the phone down, and picked up Slyboots. “So, Boots, you got any ideas on this?”

*Oh, don’t drag ME into this! I’m Switzerland, strictly neutral here. If you wanna carry on this fool feud with yourself, you can do it without my help*

“See?” Moira said, “Even the four-footed beast knows better!”

*And since when are two feet any sign of intelligence?*

*****

“Y’know, the only good thing about you always going away,” Cassie said as she gave Vickie a big hug, “is that it’s so good to SEE you when you come back!”

Vickie returned the hug, and then turned to face the ‘Fab Five’. “Okay, I can see Darryl here sticking his neck out to help me - he’s a class act. But what about you guys?”

“What, you’re saying that we’re not a class act?” Robin Winkler said with a pout. Robin was moon-faced, freckled, slightly chubby and wore glasses. She was exactly the sort who would have been cast to play ‘Velma’ in a production of ‘Scooby-doo, where are you?’

“No, I’m saying that I don’t know you that well. Darryl and I have...a history. But why are you four going out for me?”

“Pure survival,” Lloyd Cunliffe said sourly. “Each of us is a Top Twenty rated duelist, but our success is greatly a matter of us having very effective dueling styles. We think that your alter ego has been scoping each of us out, figuring the weaknesses of our styles, like he did with Darryl and Riley. Darryl has a little under a week before they’ll let him accept challenges, and Riley’s moves were too fast for anyone to pick up on Vic’s counter-moves. Vic probably won’t challenge Riley again for a while, but the rest of us are fair game. We need time to figure out what the flaws in our styles are, before he jumps us and takes us for our best matrixes.”

“Well, I know that Vic is keeping a notebook..."

“oohhh!” Leslie Turnbow squealed, “Goodie! Can you let us look at it? If we know his counter-moves-”

“Sorry, but he has Long Tom keep it in his locker. If he hadn’t, I’d have chucked it a long time ago.”

“oh, POO!” Leslie pouted. Leslie was the tall, weedy sort, with a weak chin that really didn’t pout very well.

“But, I DO remember a few things, from when Vic was making the notes.”

“I thought that you couldn’t remember anything from Vic,” Chelkiss said, not so much criticizing as genuinely curious.

“Only the stuff that happened since the Sigil was applied. By the way, Darryl, any idea of when the effect of the sigil is going to wear off?”

Darryl shook his head. Leslie pushed that topic aside, “Well? You were saying? Our weaknesses?”

“Well, I don’t remember anything, just a few of the more glaring-”

“Enough with the excuses! Explain!”

Vickie sighed, and looked at the clock, to see how much time she had. “Okay, Leslie, your big flaw is that you rely too much on that ‘Tree of Power’ that you ‘grow’ inside the Ring. You use it to tap into the Ring for power, you use it to defend you, and to provide materials for your attacks.”

“Yes? So?”

“Well, did it ever occur to you to wonder what would happen, if someone ‘poisoned’ that tree at the roots? Or carved his own name into the trunk, after obliterating yours?”

Leslie wilted, crossed her eyes in horror and went “…eeewww…”

“Precisely. Also, growing the tree takes too much time. Most of your opponents waste that time attacking you as you grow it. A wiser enemy would use that time to subvert the tree to their own ends. And along those lines, Robin-”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. That is, unless you’d prefer to tough it out?”

“eerrr...No. Go ahead.”

“Well, your problem starts out more or less the same as Darryl’s. You base your attacks on various effects that you see in the anime that you obviously love so much. For instance, you really should do that ‘Magical Girl Transformation’ BEFORE you step into the ring, instead of after the match has begun.”

Vickie was about to go further into it, when the Five Minute bell rang, and they all had to scramble for class. Vickie endured all the ‘you’re back!’ comments with a good heart, and settled down to concentrate on her ‘Comprehension’ spell for Math class. Her concentration has shattered by a staccato rap on the desk in front of her. Vickie looked up, and saw Litigious Lynn standing over her, glowering. “Yes?”

Wordlessly, Lynn handed her a folded note.

Vickie started to say, ‘Oh, you’ve got to be kidding’, but then remembered that Lynn couldn’t say anything for at least another 125 hours, and so would have to write down anything that she wanted to say. Also, there was the none too trivial matter that she was magically restrained from any form of revenge. Not wanting to rub salt in the wound, Vickie took the note wordlessly.

And immediately regretted it. She felt the force that she remembered from the first time that the Containment spell had been used on her. But how?

Vic blinked in surprise at Lynn, who was blinking in surprise right back at him. She turned to the door, where Lexie was leaning, smirking a pussycat grin. “Are you so used to skirts, that you’re going to wear that during class?”

Vic got a hall pass, and went to change. “Hey, Lex, how did you pull that off? One of the last things that I remember from before Vickie blocked my memory somehow, was her suckering the Litigious One into a bet, so she wouldn’t try anything for a year. So, how did you talk her into crossing Vickie?”

“Simple!” Lexie was obviously not immune to showing off, either. “She didn’t know that she was delivering a hex! I just told her to deliver a note. She didn’t have any Feedback, so it didn’t effect her. And, since she managed to get back at the Blonde Blight without triggering her Bad Luck hex, she won’t hold it against me.”

Vic slipped an arm around Lexie’s shoulder. “I have such GREAT taste in women.”

“Not bad legs, either!” Lexie said, looking down.

*****

Vic got slapped with a Hex slip during History, but amazingly, it wasn’t from either Welles’ or Chelkiss’ crews. It was from Harry Trabbold, a middleweight who’d picked up on Vic’s ‘Study & Analyze’ scam. He figured that Vic hadn’t studied him, and that his experience in the ring would tell, when Vic didn’t have his opposition taped. It was an underhanded ploy, but Vic respected that. Not that that kept him from handing Trabbold his ass in the ring. Trabbold was an adequate Duelist, and Vic did pick up a few nice tricks from him. But now that Vic actually had some force behind his magical punches and he had Chelkiss’ Shield matrix protecting him, Vic had Trabbold down within three minutes.

“So, what did you take him for?” Lexie asked as she draped herself on Vic’s arm when he strutted out of the ring.”

“Value for Value. I took him for his ‘Heart’ matrix.”

“Is THAT all?”

“It’s a Sapphire-class Heart matrix,” Vic gloated. Lexie cooed appreciatively. Heart monads are the part of a Goblin or Spirit that can tap into the magical fields around them to power their effects. Bound into a matrix, they allowed the Mage to channel magical energy into their own effects more efficiently, and to tap power from a wide area and range of phenomena. They were ranked by the ‘gem’ they manifested when bound into matrixes: Catseye was ranked the lowest, then Opal, Emerald, Ruby, Sapphire, and Diamond was ranked highest. Everyone had a Heart matrix, but most only had a Catseye or Opal at best. Lexie herself had a Ruby Heart matrix, and she was rather proud of that. But she obviously envied Vic his Sapphire.

“Well, young man, you ARE coming up in the world! Would it be presumptuous of me to expect a celebratory visit to Pop Tate’s™ after school?”

“Yes! Err, that is, yes, you can expect an invitation to join me in celebrating after school. But not right away.”

“Oh? You got Detention for something?”

“No, but if I’m reading Big Ben’s signal correctly, I have a duel scheduled for just after school. I think he’s telling me that he managed to tag Chelkiss’ anime freak buddy, Robin Winkler. Either that, or somebody slipped him an ‘Ants-in-the-pants’ hex.”

*****

Vic managed to avoid Welles and his buddies’ pathetic attempts to slip him a hex without breaking a sweat. Nice try, losers, but no cigar! He waited for the other Hex challenges to sort themselves out, and was rewarded with front row tickets to a truly classic knock-down-drag-out slugfest between Akira Kusogawa, the captain of the school’s Kendo club and J.J. “Jawbreaker’ Johnstone, the school kickboxing champ. The ‘Jawbreaker’ was a notorious homophobe, and the only way that Kusogawa could have been more obvious about his same-sex orientation would have been to have embroidered ‘Gay Pride’ in daisies on the back of his kimono. Both guys were very up front and physical in their dueling styles, as opposed to most kids’ ‘zap from a distance’ styles. The fight took ten minutes, largely because both of them were too stubborn to give up. It rather reminded Vic of those ‘beat ‘em up’ animes, where the hero fought on, though battered halfway to the ICU. Kusogawa won on points. He was a better duelist, but Johnstone was God’s own tough, and Kusogawa limped when he walked out of the ring.

As Johnstone was carried out, Vic was really in the mood for kicking some butt. In a way, he was sorry that it was only Winkler. Winkler might have been a tough duelist, but it was hard to work up a lot of enthusiasm for beating up someone who looked THAT pathetic. Still, she had her ‘Thunder-lance’ matrix, which was one of the most efficient, accurate and damaging magical weapons that he’d ever seen deployed in the ring. He’d seen that thing rip a conjuration apart with a single blast. He heard that it was a synthesis of one of Winkler’s weirder ideas, a particularly difficult weaving of three different matrixes, some of Chelkiss’ best work, and some technomantic work by Cunliffe. If he was going to start winning in the ring on a regular basis, he needed the major firepower of that it would give him.

Like the rest of the ‘Fab Five’, he’d studied Winkler’s moves. First, she’d psyche out her opponent by doing this big ‘transformation sequence’, like those in anime, where she’d be picked up and bit by bit changed from a schlub into an Uber-Babe in an outfit that was an unlikely combination of a Japanese ‘sailor’ school uniform and Greek armor. No wonder she loved dueling so much - it was her chance to be gorgeous. She’d open up with a barrage of ranged attacks, and then she’d do this bit where she explained whatever maneuver she was gonna pull next. This part he actually appreciated. It finessed the opposition into playing along with her explained scenario, which always had a minor ‘flaw’ that they could exploit. The ‘flaw’ was a trap, which she always portrayed as her somehow improvising a way to turn this reversal to her advantage. As the opposition was coping with whatever that was, she’d take her time, finishing them off with a few carefully aimed blasts of her Thunder-lance.

First, take advantage of her distraction with the ‘transformation sequence’. He already had a Hex Slip that would strip her bare and subject her to the ‘Fabulous Funbags’ curse. That would keep her off-balance, and allow him to get up close. That was key - get close and stay there. She was best at a range, but like most distance fighters, she probably wasn’t very good up close and personal. A few squeezes of the old funbags ought to rattle her something fierce.

But right off the bat, something was off. Robin walked into the ring, already ‘suited up’. Well, THAT was a good half-hour of Hex Slip crafting, shot all to hell! He needed to catch her in that long whirling ‘transformation sequence’ for his hex to work.

The familiars, Slyboots and Winkler’s familiar, a ridiculously cute whatzit, did their totemic posturing, and Vic barely had a chance to get his Shield matrix up as Winkler let him have it with a Thunder-lance blast. Well, this was not going as planned. After Chelkiss and Comstock, the ‘Fab Five’ probably figured out that he was scoping them out, and got together for a long overdue tactics review of some sort. Oh well, at least he got two good uses out of that tactic. And, he still knew a few things about her that he could still use. Like, she wasn’t very good at the up close stuff.

He pulled out a ‘Mirror Images’ charm, and surrounded her. She responded by growing a pair of pure white angelic wings and taking to the air. She started ‘popping’ images, one at a time. Vic took advantage of this to produce a hex slip with the Word of Wind on it. Winkler’s wings didn’t help her in the resultant whirlwind; if anything they were an active liability, knocking her about mercilessly.

Sensing that Winkler was about to fall, Vic threw a Goblin card, calling forth the Fenris Spider inside. On Vic’s mental command, the huge arachnid created a ‘net’ of webbing between four of its legs and held it up to catch Winkler as she fell.

Winkler zapped the Fenris Spider on her way down, knocking it for a loop, and took the fall as best she could. Sensing his opening, Vic threw an ‘Ice Sheet’ hex at the ground under Winkler’s feet, and she stumbled trying to get up.  Vic jaunted there in a trice and was lowering a ‘Charmed Containment Cocoon’ hex on her when Winkler flipped a matrix on her charm bracelet into her hand and jammed it into Vic’s chest.

Both effects went off at the same time. Winkler was wrapped in a ‘cocoon’ consisting of a single elongated hex slip with glowing glyphs. But Vic himself was wrapped up in a cocoon, one of familiar foxfire. Shaking her head to clear her brain, Vickie looked around in abject confusion. “What am I doing here?”

Shawanda Paige chewed on her stylus, trying to figure out how to call this. “MISSUZ ROKER!”

*****

Roker decided that since Vickie was registered as a distinct and separate person from Vic on the Dueling Roster, Vic had been disabled by Winkler’s gambit. But, Winkler had also been rendered hors de combat, so it was a Tie, by way of a Double Knockout, and neither party had to fork over their wager. It was a dodgy call, and everyone knew that people were going to be arguing about it for years, but Mrs. Roker was on overtime and wanted to get the dueling over with for the afternoon.

*****

“MAN, this is weird!” Vickie said as she came out of the changing room. “The last thing that I remember, is being in Math, and the Litigator was there, handing me a piece of paper.”

“You just TOOK a piece of paper from Litigious Lynn?” Leslie Turnbow asked incredulously. “And you’re surprised that you got hexed?”

“Vickie suckered Lynn into a pact, where Lynn can’t take active measures against her,” Chelkiss explained. “Though, that does raise the uncomfortable question of exactly HOW she got around that hex. It was so elegantly simple, that I couldn’t think of anything.”

“Not to worry, Vee!” Cassie said, draping a comradely arm over Vickie’s shoulder, “The Five Fs are on the case! And those two mook buds of Vic’s are freaking wimps! We’ll run rings around them.”

“Ah, News, Cass,” Doug interrupted her. “The word in the boys’ locker room, is that Vic has finally managed to get Lexie Verlaine in his corner.”

“aaawww...NUTS!” Frankie groaned, “Big Ben and Long Tom, we could use for playing ‘Pin the tail on the donkey’! But Lexie actually has brains!”

“And, she’s sneaky,” Robin added, “and clever, and she knows her stuff. Porches to Peaches, Lexie was behind whatever Lynn pulled.” Robin paused and shuddered. “Oh, if those two ever really get together, we are all in big trouble!”

“Maybe we could sic ‘Deliver us from Eva’ on Lexie?” Jase suggested.

“Nah,” Vickie shook her head. “Eva’s a huge Dragons fan, and she’s been trying to get Vic re-instated to the Warmaze team for a while. If anything, if we got her involved in this, she’d try to fix it so that Vic was always in charge, so that he could get back on the team. Nope, we do NOT want Eva involved in this.” Everyone there made a reflexive gesture of Warding against Evil.

“Well, give the weasel his due,” Dylan admitted. “He was an absolutely Kick-Ass ‘King’ in Warmaze. He was well on his way to breaking the Freshman sneak-back record, when Coach Blackwood kicked you both off the team.”

“Hey, _I_ was up to play! Is it MY fault that Blackwood’s a homophobic/morphophobic jerk? Come to think of it, how did a morphophobe like him get a job at this school?”

“He was the MIT&T Warmaze starting Lancer for three Championship seasons, and he’s an old buddy of the school district superintendent,” Yasmin answered sourly. “I found that out the hard way, when he tried to get me kicked out of school.”

Vickie shrugged and put that old question aside. “So, Chelkiss - any chance of creating a counter-charm to prevent your cage from forming?”

Chelkiss shrugged back at her. “Working on it, but, Vickie, you gotta realize, that containment effect was a prototype. We designed it to see what would happen if you caged up Feedback like that. I have absolutely NO idea as to what would happen, if you tried to introduce a counter-pattern. We’ll try and come up with something, but I can’t guarantee anything.”

Doug perked up. “How about an already existing ‘Dam’, that has a ‘hole’ built into it? It doesn’t stop the feedback, but it occupies the ‘space’ that a real ‘Dam’ would, so a new ‘Dam’ can’t be erected in its place?”

They thought it over, but Cunliffe shook his head. “Nice try, but no dice. The new ‘Dam’ would simply form over the mock Dam; if anything, the mock Dam would reinforce the outer Dam.” Cunliffe paused. “Still, that does suggest a venue of research - instead of an impenetrable barrier, what if we arranged a more porous structure, which allowed the Feedback out at a controlled rate, which-”

“That’s all very fascinating,” Vickie cut off what was obviously developing into a geek-out of colossal proportions, “but right now, I’m more worried about how I’m gonna get home? Lexie probably knows all about what happened by now, and I sorta doubt that she’s just gonna let it stand, if she’s decided that she wants Vic around and not me.”

“Simple!” Dylan pulled his zipboard out of his backpack.

“Very nice. And what about tomorrow morning?”

“Gotcha covered, Blondie,” Cassie grinned. “We’ll meet you at your place, and walk you to school.”

“There’d better be more to your plan than that, Cass,” Vickie warned.

*****

The next morning, the neighborhood was treated to the remarkable sight of five gorgeous blonde identical twins walking side by side, chatting gaily.

*****

At school, the disguises were dropped at the insistence of a teacher. The Five Fs had most of their morning classes separately, so they had to trade off escorting Vickie around with Dylan and each other. After Science, Vickie was waiting by the classroom door for Yasmin. Then, Oswaldo ran up. Not Yasmin, but Oswaldo, wearing a baggy girl’s uniform. “Vickie! Vickie, you gotta help me!”

“Oswaldo? What happened?”

Oswaldo fended off a snide remark with a sneer. “Lexie Verlaine happened. She cut me off, and managed to slip me this.” He held up a hex slip. “She said that it was permanent, and I’d never be able to become Yasmin again!” He was almost hyperventilating with near-panic.”

“Has that thing discharged?”

“Yeah!”

“Lemme see it.” Oswaldo handed her the slip, and the second that the hex passed from his hand to hers, Vickie felt the now familiar containment affect form around her, squashing her-

-and Vic was there, suddenly snapped out of the dueling ring, and into a skirt and panties. “Ahhh, Maaannn...! Not AGAIN!”

‘Oswaldo’ dispelled the illusion with a snap of the fingers, and Lexie was there. “Y’know, if I have to keep doing this, we’re going to have to come to some sort of reward for me.”

“Are we talking banana splits after school, or movies?”

“Oh, that’s more in the way of rewards for YOU, young man! I was thinking more in the way of you helping me with my Wizardry homework.”

Vic grinned, and said, “Well, I was thinking more in the way of THIS.” He pulled her close and gave her a deep passionate kiss.

When they broke the kiss, Lexie was a tad flustered, but she managed to quip, “Y’know, this would be a LOT hotter, if you weren’t wearing a skirt.”

“That’s what YOU say, Sister!” piped up a boy as he squeezed past them in the door.

******

After that, it was open warfare between the Five Fs (and allies), and Vic’s crew. In the Afternoon session, Chelkiss pulled a variant of the trick that Vickie had used on Litigious Lynn. The next day, Long Tom came up to Vickie disguised as Dylan, and after getting a kiss, slipped Vickie the containment hex that changed her back to Vic. Trixie descended to using her ‘Boy bopper’ on Vic, and slipped him the portal hex while he was woozy. Lexie even managed to finesse Vickie into a street duel with Jawbreaker Johnstone, and used the confusion to zap her with a containment hex. This didn’t slow the Jawbreaker down any, and Vic only managed to get away with all of his matrixes - and ass - intact by jaunting away.

Vic was exhausted by Friday, and he nearly got down on his hands and knees and kissed his mother’s feet when she decreed that no one in the family was going to get involved with his idiotic feud. Which meant that he had the weekend to rest up before facing Vickie’s crew at school again.

Saturday passed uneventfully, and Vic was actually looking forward to Church for once. After all the jinking back and forth, it was nice, sitting in the pew and partaking of the comforting certainty of Mass. Vic stiffened as he recognized Yasmin Trejos sitting with her family, looking like the perfect devout Hispanic Catholic schoolgirl. Their eyes met, and Vic got the distinct impression that Trejos was marking him. Oh, yeah, the bitch definitely had something up her sleeve. She wouldn’t dare do anything in church, so he’d better make tracks the second that the service was over.

Still, Mass took a couple of hours, so Vic settled in and enjoyed the Hymns.

Father Ethan gave a rousing sermon on Personal Responsibility, and from there the relaxing, if still mildly boring, ritual ground along its routine. After the hymns, he got in line to take Communion. In his turn, Vic kneeled, opened his mouth for the wafer, and Father Ethan said the Blessing, and administered the wine and-

-there was a flash of foxfire, and Vic was lifted up off the floor, wrapped up in sheet of magical energy. For many of the parishioners, this was the first time that they’d seen Vic transform, and the serene monotony of the ritual was completely shattered. Some of the churchgoers were on their knees praying, some were standing jaws dropped, and some were edging toward the door. Father Ethan did his best to keep half of the congregation from fleeing in terror and the other half from rising up in rebellion, as the O’Bryans hustled an extremely confused Vickie out through the rectory.

“I have NEVER been so embarrassed!” Mom thundered. “WHY did you have to pull your little stunt in CHURCH? Have you no RESPECT for God?”

*****

“So, you changed back in Church for some reason, and your Mom freaked?” Cassie asked.

“OH YEAH!” Yasmin said. “The Church is still really touchy about magic. Magic really puts a crimp on the whole Miracles thing. Still, this does prove that the Sacraments are more powerful than Chelkiss’ containment thingie.” She elbowed Vickie. “Hey, look at the bright side! This proves that God is on OUR side!”

“I hadda explain to the Mom that I had absolutely NADA to do with it,” Vickie complained. “Chelkiss didn’t see it coming, I didn’t see it coming, and I’m pretty sure that Vic didn’t see it coming.”

“Well, DUH!” Cassie bleated. “If Vic had seen it coming, they wouldn’t’a been able to drag him into that church with an electric winch.”

“Well, now Mom is making me take Catechism again, to teach me proper respect for the Church, so don’t expect to see either side of me in the afternoons for a bit.”

“Not to worry,” Yaz assured her, “just go to class until things cool down, then ask to take the tests, and everything should be cool.”

“That could still take a while,” Vickie said as they reached her locker. “This really hit Mom where she lives. We hadda miss the second half of Mass. She went on and on for hours.” She opened the locker and reached for her Math book. The second that she lifted the textbook, Vickie was encased in a sphere of dull red bands, which contracted into her, and she faded away, revealing Victor. In a dress. Again.

“What?” Vic looked around him, utterly baffled. “But how?” He glared at Yasmin and yelled. “WHAT? You tagged me IN CHURCH? Have you NO RESPECT-”

“That will be quite enough, Mister O’Bryan.” The quiet, though still commanding voice of Principal Kelley quickly put a lid on Vic’s noise. To some, it might seem that Kelley let the students run wild. In truth, he had both the good sense and good humor to allow them to make the sort of mistakes that they could learn from, and the delicate combination of discipline, ruthlessness and raw POWER to make them shut up, sit down and listen. And, most importantly, he had the wisdom and timing to know when to do which. This was obviously one of the times when he chose the latter.

“I see that you had Miss Verlaine plant one of her containment hexes in your first period textbook, just in case. Very clever. No, Mister O’Bryan, Miss Trejos had nothing to do with what happened to you at Our Lady of a Thousand Blessings yesterday. Really, I am disappointed with you. You should have seen that coming. Yes, I heard all about it, from Father Ruark. And I agree with him; while watching you walk through the halls in a skirt several times a day has been quite diverting, enough is definitely enough. Mr. O’Bryan, change into your other set of clothes, and come immediately to my office. Miss Tallyrand, come to my office as well. You will represent the side of this quarrel that wishes Mr. O’Bryan’s female half to remain. I will send for Miss Verlaine to represent the opposing viewpoint.”

“Hey, I can-” Vic started.

“Enough! Get some pants on!”

*****

Cassie glared at Lexie and Vic, and they glared back at her. Then they all looked in surprise when Chelkiss walked in. “Darryl! What are you doing here?”

“He is here, Miss Tallyrand, for the same reason that you three are here,” Principal Kelley said in his ‘I’m in charge here, don’t give me any guff’ voice. “This little game of gender Ping-Pong that you’ve been playing has been quite amusing and rather instructive. You’ve all shown a good deal of ingenuity. Miss Talleyrand, please pass along to Miss Chandrasekhar, that I was agreeably impressed by her direct - if rather draconian - way of finessing Mr. O’Bryan into accepting a hex slip. But experience teaches us that this sort of thing always reaches a point where the fun and games stop, and it starts getting nasty. It is my expert opinion that we are now at that point. Miss Verlaine, I believe that you have the talisman that creates the Feedback containment?”

Lexie opened her blazer, as if to suggest that Kelley search her. Kelley raised an unamused eyebrow, and walked out from behind his desk. He took Lexie’s sleeve, reached into ‘sleeve-space’, and pulled the charm out.

He resumed his seat. “Miss Abbot, Mr. Chelkiss, I believe that you have copies of the ‘Valve’ talisman?” Cassie and Darryl placed their copies on the desk. Kelley picked up one of the amulets and said a few words over it. Five identical phantasmal images floated near the amulet. “Miss Abbot, Mr. Chelkiss, would you each please pass along to your cohorts that I expect to see four more of these amulets on my desk by lunch break? And Mr. Chelkiss, no more copies?”

Chelkiss nodded, but Cassie wasn’t going down without a fight. “Mister Kelley, this is not right! Vickie has as much right to exist as Victor does! Heck, Vickie is just Vic’s way of coping with Feedback, right? So tell me, what’s gonna happen to all the power that his Feedback’s causing, if it can’t work itself out? I’m telling you, it’s in Vic’s own interest that this unnatural situation-”

“UNNATURAL?” Lexie shouted, “You have a lot of nerve, talking about ‘unnatural’!”

“SILENCE!” Kelley thundered. When the two girls wilted into quiet, he resumed in a normal voice, “Miss Tallyrand has a point, which we have already worked out. Mister O’Bryan, you have two days grace period, during which Miss Tallyrand and her friends will NOT-” he speared both Cassie and Chelkiss with a gorgon gaze, “-attempt to change you back. At the end of this grace period, you will attend Father Ruark’s Wednesday Afternoon Mass, and take Communion. I believe that you all know what will happen then. The containment will be dissolved, and Mr. O’Bryan will resume dealing with his Feedback issues as he had before.” Vic snarled, and Cassie gloated at this turn of events.

“There is something that all children, even Mage-Children must learn,” Kelley continued. “The fortunate ones pick up on it quickly. The ones that don’t, tend to drift into Politics. That lesson is, that you can’t get something for nothing. Everything has a price. Just because you’ve fiddled it around so that you’ve delayed payment, doesn’t mean that you’re not going to pay. My point here, Mr. O’Bryan, is that there’s something you’re not doing that you should be. If you were, then ‘Vickie’ wouldn’t exist as a separate person. I suggest that you think about this, Mr. O’Bryan: Why does ‘Vickie’ exist, in the first place? Oh yes, and Mr. Chelkiss, when Miss O’Bryan returns, I want you to remove that Sigil of Saturn from her. Yes, I know that it seemed like a good idea at the time. But you remember this - ‘it seemed like a good idea at the time’ is what people say after they’ve done something incredibly stupid.”

But Vic wasn’t having it. “Hold ON! You can’t mean that we went through all of this, just to go back to square one!”

“Mister O’Bryan, some of the greatest minds in History - Lao Tzu, Archimedes, Galileo, Kepler, Ramanujan, Einstein, Finson - have had to ‘go back to square one’ in order to find the truth; I see no reason why you should be exempt.”

“What if I can come up with something?”

“Mister O’Bryan, if you can come up with a valid way of controlling your Feedback, then I would be the first to congratulate you. However, you’ve had - what? Seven months? - to work on this.”

“Then three days wouldn’t hurt anything, would it?”

“IF you can come up with something, Mr. O’Bryan, then I’ll listen. If it’s a viable way of resolving this, I’ll be more than happy to listen. However, your feminine half will also have to agree to it. Exactly HOW you will arrange that in three days, I leave to your ingenuity.”

*****

As they headed to their first classes, Lexie said, “So, you have something up your sleeve?”

“Sweetheart, I always have something up my sleeve. I just go around making little mental notes, and filing them away for future reference. Oh, and for future reference, are there any particular hard-to-find goblins that you’d like?”

“You couldn’t ask that about jewelry?”

“I’m a lot more likely to find a goblin than a diamond bracelet.”

“Ah, the trials of dating a poor boy. In that case, if you see any Stonebinders, Thunder-wyrms, or Flying Eyeballs, the next time you’re down in the sewers, think of me.”

*****

“Okay, I got two Stonebinders, and three Flying Eyeballs, but there was only one Thunderwyrm.” Vic passed the cards over to Lexie.

Lexie gaped at the cards. “You slipped out and went goblin hunting during class?” she hissed soto voce.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Vic seemed hurt. “I just happen to have a key to MacKenzie’s office, and snuck them out of his Resale file.” Mr. MacKenzie was one of the three professional Devil Hunters that the school hired to bag the sundry supernatural creatures that snuck into the school during the night. They were Devil Hunters; comparing them to average Goblin Hunters like Artie Culligan was like comparing a Big Game hunter to a mouse exterminator. “They’re all technically school property, and I’m a student, so what’s the problem?”

Lexie eyed him suspiciously. “And exactly what do you want for these?”

“And what makes you think that I want anything?”

“I’ve seen you work.”

Vic pulled out four more cards. They must have been extremely rare, since Lexie didn’t recognize them. “Let’s trade Graingers’. I have the right pages darted, and the appropriate matrixes highlighted. You have Chant Lab before I do today, so separate the matrixes and get them to me. I’ll take it from there. Except for the stuff that I highlighted, you can keep everything else from those cards.”

“What ARE you up to?”

“I’ll let you know after I finish Chant Lab. That is if I don’t blow myself up.”

*****

Lexie met up with Vic and his boys at Reddy’s pedestal. She managed to keep her tongue until they got to Pop Tate’s™. “Okay, what the Hell was UP with those things? Those cards were Safety Sealed, and the damn things still almost bit my head off! Two of those things were not goblins, Vic; they were Devils! What the HELL do you want with matrixes from a Mind Flayer and a Delphic Python for?”

Vic took her by the arm and led her down the street. “And a Theban Sphinx and a Svardalf. So, did you find anything that you liked?”

“Liked? No. Might have a use for, someday? Definitely! But what did YOU get?”

“Me? Vic smiled innocently. “I got THIS.” He held up an amulet that looked as if it were spun glass. It was a circle surrounding a triangle, and it looked like it would break if you gave it a harsh glare.

“You mean, I went through all that, for something that you could have gotten in a gift shop for Ten Bucks?”

Vic just gave a grin. “Come by my place tonight. For a study session, you understand.”

“Hey!” Long Tom objected. “What about US?”

“Hey, get your own girl.”

*****

Mom let Vic and Lexie study in the dining room, and gave them privacy. Not a LOT of privacy, but she wasn’t hovering over their shoulders. “Are you sure about this, Vic? I mean, we can’t do anything sneaky, if your mother’s watching us.”

“Not to worry. What we’re gonna do, falls nicely under the heading of homework. Heck, we might even get an ‘A’ in Enchantment back of this.”

“Revenge, fun, matrixes, and now good grades!” Lexie grinned at Vic, “Y’know, if you figured out a way for us to make Big Bucks doing this, it might almost be worth the hassle! Okay, what’s the big ideal with the dingus?”

“Oh, This?” Vic held up the gewgaw. “This is an idea that I ran across on the Net.”

“We’re down to trying out stuff we got off the Web?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“And what is that supposed to do?”

“Well, for want of a better term, it’s a ‘Breakthrough Matrix’.”

“A ‘Breakthrough Matrix’,” Lexie said dryly, her eyes saying ‘you gotta be shitting me’.

“Y’see, I took the ‘Access Knowledge’ and ‘Read Memory’ matrixes from the Mind Flayer, the ‘Evaluate Probabilities’ matrix from the Delphic Python, the ‘Hypercognate’ matrix from the Theban Sphinx, and the ‘Forge Device’ matrix from the Svardalf, arranged them around the Sigil of Saturn-”

“Oy! The Sigil of Saturn again! Enough geek-chatter already! That does the dingus DO?”

“Well, it takes all the information available, applies it to a task, and creates a magical matrix to suit the task.”

Lexie gave Vic the ‘you idiot’ look. “Vic, you can’t use a magical matrix to create a magical matrix, especially a more powerful one. The Law of Entropy applies in Spades to Magic.”

“Oh, it doesn’t create the matrix itself, it should just do all the design work. It takes whatever problem that you’re concentrating on, gathers the pertinent data and principles available, determines what will probably work the best, and ‘assembles’ the design around the highest probability. The Sigil of Saturn holds the entire thing together, since I worked all of that around the ‘Discovering Secrets’ variation.” He hauled eight months worth of ‘Thautmaturgy Weekly’ and four armloads of books onto the tabletop. “The parts that I got from the Mind Flayer will ‘read’ the data from these books and newspapers, and the part from the Svardalf will ‘print’ the designs onto the newspapers.” He placed the books at the corners of the table, and opened the newspapers out wide in the center. “Now, remember, concentrate on solving my Feedback containment problem, focus that onto the matrix, and keep your hand on this stack of newspapers. I borrowed the books from the school library, and I don’t want the spell to over-write them.”

Lexie nodded. “Okay, that makes sense - sort of. But what if, after all of this, we get nuthin’?”

“Then we can honestly say that we took our best shot, and I won’t be able to take you out Friday night.”

Lexie shot a semi-amused half-smile back at him. “Taking a lot for granted, ain’cha?”

“You wouldn’t respect me, if I didn’t strike while the iron was hot.”

Lexie mock pouted for a bit. “Well then, I want another goblin.”

“To go on a date?”

“No, to go along with this nonsense. You shoved some very powerful matrixes into that thing, and I want something to show for the risk.”

“What? The matrixes you got from those four goblins-”

“Two goblins and two DEVILS!”

“From those four spirits weren’t enough for you?”

“You wouldn’t respect me, if I didn’t strike while the iron was hot,” Lexie shot back.

Vic strummed his fingers on the tabletop. Well, he had been asking a lot of Lexie, he owed her at least this victory. He grinned at her. “Oh, the trials of dating a smart girl. Okay, Lex, waddya want?”

“Well, Sewer Babies have been God’s own scarce lately...”

“Tell me about it! I think that I may have bagged the last one in the area last week.”

“You did? What did you do with it?”

“Boiled it down for Rosedew lotion, for my Mom and Aunt Fay.” Seeing an opening, he added, “Would that do, instead of the Sewer Baby, or one of the matrixes?”

Lexie thought it over. “Sure. No problem.”

Vic looked at her skeptically. Why would Lexie want Rosedew Lotion? She was only sixteen, and well past her ‘awkward stage’--- wait a minute. “Lexie, you aren’t using Beauty magic, are you?” Lexie blushed. “Awww...LEX... You oughta know better’n that! You wanna end up your stereotypical withered old witch? You know that Beauty magic has all kinds of backlash!”

Lexie crossed her arms and sniffed. “Truly spoken like someone who turns into natural knockout blonde! *Humph!* And for your information, I know that, and I’ve managed to turn it to my advantage!”

“Oh? Convince me.”

“Well, a person’s appearance isn’t graven in stone by their DNA. Everyone has a wide spectrum of ways that they can develop. For instance, the vast majority of ‘identical twins’ aren’t that identical. Now, where most ‘Beauty Magic’ goes wrong, is it tries to impose a biological pattern on the existing pattern. Your DNA and the magic are in conflict, so there’s all that backlash. The more you use magic to make yourself look pretty, the more you’re damaging your biological patterns. What I did was, I used Sorcery to determine the various ways that I might grow up looking like, and found one development that I liked. I used a combination of Sorcery and Enchantment to sort of ‘guide’ my biological patterns, so that they follow the paths that I want. I’m developing naturally, with a helping hand from magic.  So, barring getting in a car crash, or mauled by a devil, or catching something horrible, I know what I’m going to look like at 25, at 50, and so on. And - no brag, just fact - I’m gonna look FABULOUS!”

Vic paused and nodded, visibly impressed. “Okay, that works. But then waddya need the Rosedew lotion for?”

“Hey, I’m not one of these giddy idiots who tries to overwhelm Nature with Magic, and thinks that’s that. I’m taking it nice and slow, ‘tweaking’ Nature with a gentle hand. I’m gonna be doing this once a day, for at least the next six years, and be a natural beauty. So, no ‘Margaret Hamilton Fan Club’ for ME!”

Vic held up a finger and got up from the table. When he came back, he was carrying three of the bottles of pink lotion. “Here. On the house. If you want something, think of something else. I made up these extras, in case I needed to turn Mom or Aunt Fay over sweet, but now these are for you. So, what do you need, in exchange for helping me with this ‘Breakthrough’ matrix?”

Lexie took one of the bottles and flushed slightly. She looked at Vic, her dark eyes sparkling. “Oh, Vic! You DO care!”

Vic just spread his hands magnanimously. “Hey, and if you need anything, just let me and the boys know.”

Lexie laid her hand gently on Vic’s. After a tender moment, she pulled herself together. “I’ll tell you what. Just list me as a co-contributor when you submit this for Class Credit in Enchantment, and we’ll call it even.”

*****

It took three tries, and when the ‘Breakthrough’ did happen, the matrix shattered into a thousand tiny shards, and they were both drained, but the designs were there on the table. “Whoo!” Lexie exulted, “Will you look at this! This will WORK! And I understand every little bit of it!”

“Well, it was the product of our own minds, after all,” Vic came back smugly. “We had a lot of help from the magic, but we really did do it ourselves.”

“We are SO getting an ‘A’ on this!”

*Yes, it IS quite good work* Slyboots admitted. Lexie’s familiar, Chandra, purred her agreement.

Vic grinned ferally. “You think that’s good? Check THIS out!”

Lexie cooed in appreciation.

*****

Eva ‘Deliver Us From Eva’ DuPraeve clipped down the hallway of Merlin High exactly fast enough to force others to give way before her, without giving the impression that she was running away from anything. Months before, some wag had managed to place a hex on her, causing appropriate ‘theme music’ to play whenever she was near. Currently, the ominous ‘Imperial March’ from the Star Wars movies was playing. It had been intended as a ‘belling the cat’ measure, but in true DuPraeve style, Eva had turned it to her advantage, making it a part of her ongoing terror campaign against the entire universe. Eva was pretty enough, in the way that a tiger shark has a stark, terrible beauty. And she moved like a shark through the halls of the school, the other students giving way, being very careful to do it in a way that didn’t catch her eye.

The effect of the theme music was gratifying, but there were too many instances where stealth was called for. Maybe I need a flunky, Eva thought to herself.

Suddenly, she was aware of someone invisibly walking beside her. Eva kept her eyes forward and her voice level. “And you want?”

“A little while ago, someone upset your little game with the Student Council.”

Eva recognized the voice as belonging to Victor O’Bryan, the alter ego of Vickie O’Bryan, the nosey little chit who had spoiled her orchestrated blackmail gambit. Still, she understood that for some reason, they were two completely separate personalities, and the male half didn’t get along with the female half. Indeed, she’d been enjoying their antics over the last week or so. “And?”

“And, I’d like to make it up to you.”

“How?”

Even though he was invisible, Eva could hear the feral grin in his voice. “I’d like to offer you a chance to get back at the bitch who crossed you, let you do the right thing by the Merlin Dragons, AND make a killing doing it.”

“Keep talking.”

*****

“Very well, Mister O’Bryan, we’re all here, as you requested.” Principal Kelley waved a hand at the Five Fs, their BFs, and the Fab Five, who regarded Vic and his extended crew with antipathy. Besides Lexie, Long Tom and Big Ben, Vic had managed to talk a few of his other friends, including J.J. Johnstone, the school kick-boxing champion, Joe ‘Matterhorn’ Matthews, and Fred ‘Takahashi Rumiki’ Grady, into joining him. “I take it that you’ve come up with an idea?”

“Yes sir, I have.” Vic stepped forward, arrogant pride shining on his face. He held up a set of plans. “And, with all due modesty, I think that I’ve come up with something that is both brilliant and fair to both sides.”

“It’s a trick,” Cassie said in a dry monotone.

Vic ignored her and laid the plans on Kelley’s desk. “Last night, as I was studying some notes that Lexie here made, regarding the construction of Comstock’s ‘bottle’ matrix.” He went on to make a few technical points.

Kelley read the plans as he listened, and nodded. “Yes, very impressive, Mister O’Bryan. VERY impressive. If I follow you, then these two matrixes are variations of the same basic design. This one creates a containment similar to the one that Mr. Comstock designed, but instead of bottling up the Feedback, it contains the point at which your Feedback energizes your anima, thus changing you into your feminine counterpart, Vickie. But this still means that you’ll have to deal with Feedback. Feedback is one of those unavoidable miseries of this life, Mr. O’Bryan, like Death, Taxes and Clip Shows. Are you sure that you want to change a devil that you know for a devil that you don’t?”

“Ah! That’s just it, Sir! Comstock’s mistake-”

“Hey! Darryl and Lloyd helped out, too!”

“Their mistake was that they made the reservoir solid. Nothing got in, nothing got out. My design-” Lexie gave him a quick kick on the ankle, “-er, OUR design, doesn’t block the Feedback, it just acts as sort of a buffer for it. The Feedback still interacts with my anima, but it keeps the power level down to a level where my Y chromosome isn’t in danger.”

“It’s a trick,” Cassie said again in her dry monotone.

“Hold it, hold it, hold IT!” Chelkiss interrupted. He walked up and took a look at the plans. “We thought about a ‘buffer’ mechanic, but erecting a plain barrier was both simpler and more energy effective. How are you coping with the large energy cost that creating a buffer will require?”

Vic nodded ruefully. “Yeah, I know. That’s why I’m afraid that Lexie and I won’t be sharing the Swedenbourg Prize, for resolving the Feedback problem. You see, this design will literally work only for me. The buffer’s power is supplied by the energy that’s created by that interface between the Feedback and my anima, which is to the best I know, only I have.”

“So, part of the force of the Feedback is expended creating the buffer that holds the rest in check, and it powers the buffer all by itself.” Kelley nodded in appreciation. “Very elegant. Pity, it will cost you that magical energy that your other half uses so well.”

“Not really, sir. The bleed-off of energy from the anima into the Heart Chakra is a vital part of keeping the Feedback flowing into the buffer. I’ll be able to access that power as long as I have Feedback feeding into the buffer. And, since it’s patched into a constant power supply, the buffer will stand up to being disrupted by things like going to Mass.”

“It’s a trick,” Cassie said again, her monotone growing exasperated.

“So far, you’re getting an ‘A’ in Theory and Design, Mr. O’Bryan. And what about this other design?”

“This is a gesture to the opposition.” Vic indicated Cassie, Dylan, Chelkiss and the others. “It operates on almost exactly the same principles, except for the power threshold. While MY matrix is set at just below the threshold point required to change me into Vickie, HER matrix is set at just above the threshold point. Her matrix is so designed that it would block the formation of any more containments, like the one that’s working inside me right now. And, the buffer would hold the Feedback, stretching it out so that Vickie’s duration would multiply by a factor of somewhere between Three and Five, depending on a whole raft of variables. AND, the buffer would catch any new Feedback and just add it to what was already there, stretching Vickie’s duration out even further. And, this wouldn’t interfere with her ability to access that power, anymore than it would for me, and it would stand up to being disrupted as well.”

“It’s a TRICK!” Cassie shouted. “IF this were for real, then he’d just USE the first one, and burn the other one!”

Kelley’s eyebrows almost lifted off of his forehead. “Miss Tallyrand’s point is - while rather loud - well taken. Why ARE you letting us in on this?”

“Two reasons. First, there’s no way on God’s Green Earth that I could assemble this matrix by tomorrow afternoon. I’d need a team of some of the best Matrix technicians available,” his eyes flickered in the direction of the Fab Five, “and I sort of doubt that they’d do it. After Mass, Chelkiss here has orders to remove the Sigil of Saturn, so of course, Vickie will remember all this, and build HER matrix, shutting me out before I can shut her out.”

Kelley looked at the two sets of plans. “Yes, it does seem rather like a ‘One or the Other’ proposition. And we are back to my first question: why have you called us all here?”

“The answer to that involves the second matter. The second reason that I don’t just use my matrix, was that either one of these designs requires a LOT of power to create. Once the buffer is up and running, there’s no problem, but-”

“But creating the buffer in the first place will be REALLY energy expensive,” Chelkiss finished for Vic, as he studied the plans.

“So,” Vic took control of the podium again, “I propose to resolve all of these difficulties with a single sporting proposition. I challenge Welles and the rest of you to a Warmaze match!”

“A Warmaze match,” Cassie said in a ‘oh, you gotta be kidding’ voice. “How will running around a painted diagram with these losers settle anything?”

“I’m not talking about some bu- err, stupid kiddie-grade game! I’m talking about a full-blown, all out, stonewall, green-hedge, four-ball Warmaze match! Here’s the deal: I provide the plans, Chelkiss and his buddies build the matrixes, and we use these matrixes as the ‘Thrones’ on the Maze. The Maze itself will be rigged so that the magical energy expended during play will be siphoned into both of the matrixes, powering them up. Whichever side of me gets to the powered up matrix first, Wins. As payment for their efforts, I’ll let Chelkiss & Co. keep the plans, after they’ve been submitted in Lexie’s and my names for school credit. Well! My team is up to the challenge-” Lexie, Ben, Tom and the rest straightened up, looking as game as they could, “-are you?”

Dylan stepped forward, his eyes narrowed. “Cassie’s right. This is a trick. Why would you risk losing months at a time, instead of weeks, the way you do now?”

“‘Cause I AM losing weeks the way it is, and I ain’t standin’ for it anymore! I could try some elaborate scam or another, but to be honest, the way my luck’s running these days, a hippopotamus would probably drop out of the sky just as I was making my crucial, must-make move! This way, it’s on the up-and-up, and the crucial factor favors ME.”

“Crucial factor?” Dylan arched an eyebrow.

“Yeah. Y’see, the way I got it mapped out, I - that is, BOTH of my sides - will be playing the ‘King’ position. Lexie and my team has to get me to my throne, and you doinks have to get Vickie to her throne.”

Dylan crossed his arms. “And exactly HOW does that favor you?”

“‘Cause there’s ONE vital factor that you yutzes just don’t seem to be capable of wrapping your little pin heads around.”

“And what’s that?”

“That I’m REAL, and ‘Vickie’ isn’t. And the world will always favor a reality over an illusion.” Vic folded his arms and let that sink in. “Well? I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is. How about you?”

Dylan turned and looked at the rest. They wordlessly thrashed it out among themselves with glances and shrugs. Finally, they came to a consensus. “Okay, Vic - you got a game.”

“Hold it.” Vic stopped them with a hand.

“What is it?”

Vic turned to Principal Kelley. “Mister Kelley, would you use that ‘Valve’ matrix to turn - oh, God, I never thought that I’d SAY this - turn me back into Vickie? I want her to hear this proposal and agree to it. It’s gotta be one hundred percent, or it’s no go.”

The amused look on Kelley’s face didn’t slip. “And what if the young lady says ‘No’?”

“Then you use the ‘Bottle’ talisman to get me back. Hey, I got another day coming, and if this doesn’t happen, I want it! Tell you what-” Vic spread his hands magnanimously, “-if she says ‘Yes’, I’ll let her stay until the match.” He gave Dylan a nasty grin. “It’ll give you time to say GOOD-BYE. Besides, you losers will need all the practice that you can get, if you’re gonna beat my team.”

“Okay, just get ON with it!” Dylan growled.

Principal Kelley lifted the ‘Valve’ talisman and pointed it at Vic. “Hold It!” Vic blurted. He grabbed the plans away from Chelkiss. “Complex, aren’t they? And yet, so elegantly simple. You could probably try to recreate them.” Vic gave Darryl another nasty grin. “But would you really wanna risk it?” He handed the plans over to Lexie. “I formally give these valuable plans over to the legal custody of my co-author and partner, Alexandra Verlaine.” That done, he nodded at Principal Kelly.

Vickie whirled back into existence in a blaze of foxfire. Lexie let Vickie get the ‘what happened?’ out of her system, and laid out the offer to her. “Well? The rest of us are raring to go. What about you?”

Vickie took a deep centering breath. “Let me talk this over a bit.”

“Okay, but remember, Sweet Cheeks, if you decide to pass on this limited-time offer, then I’m free to pursue more,” she flashed a wicked grin at Vickie, “devious means.” She waved the plans significantly.

Vickie gestured for Cassie, Dylan and Chelkiss to confer with her. “Okay, what’s you guys’ take on this?”

“It’s a trick,” Cassie said yet again.

“Yes, I think that we can all agree on that,” Dylan groused.

“BUT,” Cassie continued, “I think that it’s a trick that we probably turn against him.”

“I don’t like it,” Chelkiss stated flatly. “We’re letting Vic control the situation.”

“Yeah,” Dylan agreed, “but let’s face it, Vic is in the catbird seat, no matter what we do. If things go back to what they were, then we’ll always be on the defensive, and Vic can just wait for us to let our guard down. At least this way, whatever he’s got up his sleeve will go down in front of referees.”

“We could just take the plans from Lexie,” Cassie pointed out. “Build the matrix ourselves, and t’Hell with Vic.”

“No.” Chelkiss shook his head. “I got shafted once, stealing something from Vic. Besides, you heard Vic; those plans are now Lexie’s personal property. If we take ‘em, we’d be lucky to get a Year’s detention. Besides, if I know Vic, he’s got those plans booby-trapped for just such an emergency.”

“Okay, okay, so much for that,” Vickie summed up. “Now, how do YOU guys feel about this? Are you really up to it?”

“Hey, this is what the Five Fs are all about!” Cassie laid a hand on Vickie’s shoulder. “Puttin’ it to the Bad Guys! We got yer back, girl-fren’.”

“As for us,” Chelkiss indicated his crew, “we have our rep to consider. People don’t hassle us, ‘cause they KNOW that we’re tough. If they stop thinking that, we’ll be spending half our time slapping down idiots who think that the geeks are wimps.”

Dylan just gave Vickie a boyfriend’s ‘you know me better than that’ look.

“Boots.” Slyboots, who had been waiting out in the reception room with the other familiars, flowed through the door and up into her arms. “What do you think?”

*I think what I’ve always thought. This is a huge waste of time*

“But which side are you on?”

*Hey, Switzerland here, remember? Besides, you’re both making a huge, fundamental mistake*

“And what’s that?”

*That there are two sides to this argument. There is no ‘Vic’, and no ‘Vickie’; you’re both parts of Victor.  Victor is the real person, not the two faces. Does a left leg war on a right leg? Does a thumb quarrel with the pinkie of the same hand?*

“I don’t understand.”

*No* Slyboots gave her a lick on the cheek. *But you will*

Vickie took a deep breath. “Okay, Zen for Roundeyed Dummies is over, let’s get down to the issue at hand. Okay, Vic’s pulling a fast one. BUT there’s ONE vital factor that yutz just don’t seem to be capable of wrapping his little pin head around.”

“What’s that?”

“That he’s nowhere NEAR as smart as he thinks he is. Hell, Merlin Himself wasn’t as smart as Vic thinks he is! He’s forgotten something, or overlooked something, or just not thought it through. Whatever he’s got up his sleeve is flawed, and we can ram that down his throat.”

Slyboots gave a weary sigh as she laid her head on Vickie’s bosom, as Vickie shook Lexie’s hand, sealing the deal.

Lexie handed the plans to both matrixes and the adjustments to the Warmaze field to Chelkiss. “These are VERY advanced designs, Verlaine,” Chelkiss said as he checked them out again. "How did you come up with them so quickly?”

“Oh, Vic and I were studying together last night,” Lexie purred, a cat-in-the-cream look on her face, and, well, you might say that we had a breakthrough.”

*****

The Warmaze match was set for Friday after school, so that the field could be re-set in time for the game against the Paracelsus Pegasi on Saturday. The Five Fs - or Four Fs in this case - practiced against the Fab Five, with Dylan, Jase, Doug and a few other friends filling in the open spaces, using Vickie as the neutral ‘King’. She was a little rusty, - hey, it had been almost a year since Vic had been booted off the team! - but she quickly got back into the swing of things.

“MAN, you are sneaky!” Leslie Turnbow said as she helped Vickie make some fine adjustments to her Warmaze ‘King’ uniform. “Howcum Coach Blackwood hasn’t picked up on you for the team?”

“Oh, I was on the team last year, as Vic. But Blackwood wouldn’t let me play as Vickie, and when I wasn’t able to play for three games running because of it, he kicked me off the team.”

“WHY?” Leslie asked, aghast.

“Because Coach is a raging homophobe of the Old School, and he thinks that changing sexes is - and I quote - ‘Fag Stuff.”

“Then what the hell is he doing at Merlin? At least a third of the student body changes sexes on a semi-regular basis, and practically everyone here has walked around in the other sides’ undies at one point or another! Why would they hire someone like that? Hell, why would he take it?”

“Oh, please!” Robin Winkler muttered as she adjusted a glue job. “It’s not like we don’t already know that the School Board doesn’t have a sick sense of humor.” She made double sure of the patch with a strengthening charm. “Still, maybe the team will noodge him into letting you back on.”

“What makes you say that?” Vickie asked as she checked the flex of the crotch seam with a few Hindu Squats.

“Oh, I saw a few members of the First String checking out our practices. One of ‘em was even taping your evasion drills.”

“Hunh?” Vickie hooted. “Hey, I’m good, but I’m not THAT good.” She filed it away under ‘things to keep in mind, JIC’. “Excuse me, girls, but this is a pretty damn good fit - for ME. But I would be freaking murder on Vic to wear. I don’t wanna default to him, by him claiming a Material Foul on account of being nearly gelded by manifesting into this suit.”

“Not to worry, Blondie.” Leslie brought out a figure on a dummy dressed in a Warmaze uniform. Like Vickie’s uniform it was matte white, except for the bright blue ‘M’ on the back and on the sides of the helmet, as opposed to the bright pink ‘F’ on the suit that Vickie had on. “This is a standard Warmaze ‘King’s’ uniform in Vic’s size. We thought about hexing your uniform so that it altered its conformation when you shifted gears-”

“-but there are WAY too many ways to play nasty games with an arrangement like that,” Robin finished for her. “So, what we’re gonna do, is have you put this uniform on, and ‘move’ it into ‘closet space’, anchored to you. It’s a variation on the ‘closet space’ spell that I use during my big transformation bit. The Closet spell that I’m gonna place on you will be triggered by your shift over to Vic. The uniform that you’re wearing will be moved into ‘closet space’ while the other uniform replaces it on your body.” Robin gave a brief leer. “There will be an oh-so-brief flash of nudity, but hey, we all have our crosses to bear, Right?”

“Right. Oh, and thanks, guys, for all the support with this.”

“Hey, in for a penny, in for a pound, and all that,” Leslie mumbled through the pins in her mouth. “Besides, if you let us keep the notebook, we’re willing to call it square.”

“Notebook?”

“Yeah, the notebook that Vic was keeping, that he used to sucker-punch Darryl and Riley.”

“You STOLE the notebook out of Long Tom’s locker?”

“NO! DO you know how much trouble you can get into, stealing another student’s notes?” Robin blurted.

“err, No, we took the pen that Vic used to write the notes,” Leslie hedged.

“Yeah, Vic had a ‘Secret Writing’ charm on it, so no one could read his notes. It was a lot easier to put a Reversal charm on the pen, and-”

“And you had the pen write out what Vic had written, going backwards, right?” Vickie rubbed the bridge of her nose.

“Right! But since the notes are technically your property, you can give us permission to keep the copy, right?”

Vickie sighed, “Well, I guess that you do have a right to see Vic’s notes about your weak spots...” then she saw a conspiratorial look pass between the two girls. “ah, Were the Fab Five the ONLY people that Vic was scoping out?”

“errr...aaahhh...”

“Well, actually, he had notes on practically everyone in the Top 40.”

“Well, yeah, but some of them were just ‘Stay away from this nutcase’, and stuff like that.”

Vickie gave another long sigh. “Well, okay... It’s not like you aren’t earning it.”

Robin and Leslie piped ‘YES!’ in chorus.

*****

Friday morning, between Second and Third Periods, Trixie ran up to Vickie, Cassie and Dylan in the halls. “Hey, Vickie! I just found out what Vic had up his sleeve!”

“I knew it!” Cassie exulted. “What was it?”

“I heard that ‘Deliver Us From Eva’ was making book on the match-”

“What?” Dylan hooted, “Eva’s dumb enough to run a gambling ring on school grounds?”

“Nah, no cash, just Mana, Luck petals, goblin cards, matrixes and the other stuff. We wager that stuff on the duels, and our match is technically a duel of sorts, so there’s nothing that the Administration can do about that. But, I heard something that made me think that the fix was in. Eva is laying the odds, so that if Vic’s team wins, she’ll make a killing.”

“But if WE win, she’ll take a bath,” Vickie grinned. “And where’s the down side to this?”

“We’re talking about Eva DuPraeve, Satan’s Goddaughter,” Trixie pointed out. “She was born with an Ace up her sleeve and a switchblade in her shoe. Check this out - Eva got onto the Warmaze team to ‘fill in’ for most of Lexie’s team! Vic finessed us with a team that was just fearsome enough to be credible, but one that we knew that we could beat.”

“Well, that explains the Warmaze team’s interest in our practice runs.”

“OKAY!” Cassie was large and in charge. “We gotta get the troops together - the Fab Five, as well.”

“We’re going to confront Lexie about her little con job?”

“Good Lord, NO!” Cassie gave an evil grin. “We’re all going to lay down huge bets on ourselves to win, the minute that Trixie calls us to tell us that the Administration agreed to pull the Warmaze team! If we make a big thing about it at lunch, ‘showing our confidence in ourselves’, there’s no way that she can refuse to give us crazy odds! We’ll clean up, AND put a crimp in that bitch’s operations that’ll put her out of business for weeks!”

“Hold it,” Vickie cautioned them. “Blackwood hates me. What if he gives the team permission to play for Lexie’s side ‘to prep for the Big Game tomorrow’ or something bogus like that?”

“Not to worry,” Dylan comforted her. “Blackwood would have to give them special written permission, and I happen to know that he’s left for the day. He’s picking up equipment, and he always turns off his cell phone when he leaves.”

“Yeah,” Vickie grumbled, “lazy SOB hates to be bothered with other people’s problems.”

“So?” Cassie asked, “What are we waiting for? We have a sting to reverse!”

*****

WARMAZE

In the late 20th Century, a writer had written an improbably popular series of books in which Wizards played a rather soccer-like game while flying on broomsticks. After ‘the Great Smoke Test’, a few Mages tried playing this game, and quickly asked the question, “What idiot came UP with this?” But the idea of a Mage’s game was fixed, and they set about evolving one of their own.

What they came up with was Warmaze. Warmaze has been called a combination of Chess, Soccer, Dodgeball and Pac-man©. A Warmaze arena is the length of a football field, for the simple reason that the games that had gradually developed into Warmaze. It was twice as wide, though. The field was divided into 5’x5’ squares. The squares were constructed so that the Mazemaster could raise up either a 7’ tall hedge or a 10’ high block of granite, creating a maze of bramble or stone walls, or leave that square as part of the alleyways.

There are nine players on each team, and the goal of the game, as in Chess, is to capture the other team’s King. Each team has one player in the position of ‘King’. In order to take the other team’s King, the capturing team’s King must be on his ‘throne’, a painted box at one end of the maze, and bring the other team’s King into that throne.

Each team has two positions called ‘Lancers’. The Lancers are the players who start off play with a ball each. Unlike most team sports with balls, these balls aren’t the focus of play, the King is. These balls are enchanted, so that when they are thrown and hit someone, that person is paralyzed for one minute. The balls can be ‘shared around’ to other players, but they are generally regarded as the Lancer’s proper tool. Besides the balls, each of the Lancers carry a specialized talisman, which teleports players, other than the other side’s King, to the point where they enter the maze. A King so touched is returned to the immediate area of the Lancer’s side’s ‘throne’. The classic capture has a Lancer tracking down the other side’s King, tapping him with the ‘Lasso’ talisman, teleporting him to the Lancer’s ‘throne’ where he is taken by the ‘seated’ King. Still, if he can avoid being dragged into the ‘throne’ the captured King can escape and try to make his way back to his own throne. After the King, the Lancers are the most important position on a Warmaze team, and are usually the most active. Lancers are usually regarded as the ‘glory boys’ of the team.

Each team also has two positions called ‘Bulwarks’. Bulwarks are permitted to carry amulets that make them immune to being frozen by the balls. The main function of a Bulwark is to an intelligent movable obstruction in the maze, complicating the movement of other players. Bulwarks are classically built along the lines of a football linebacker, but some of the best Bulwarks are much slighter, and use magic to block the alleys. Bulwarks also often act as ‘bodyguards’ to keep a moving King or Lancer from being tagged by a ball. Bulwarks are also often used to get a tagging ball away from a Lancer and either using it or get it to one of their own players.

The next set of positions is called ‘Trappers’. While the King can only carry two talismans or amulets, and the other positions can only carry four (with position specific additions), a Trapper can carry as many as ten. The Trapper’s job is to complicate the other team’s movement through the maze by laying down magical traps. While there are many fine-point regulations regarding traps, the rule of thumb is ‘Nothing Lethal or Crippling’. Still, Trappers tend to get more kudos for traps based on subtlety and cunning than firepower.

The Trappers’ natural enemies are the ‘Sappers’. Whereas the Trappers’ job is to deny the other side movement through the maze, the Sappers job is to allow their teammates greater movement through the maze. They accomplish this by either disarming traps or altering the layout of the maze by ‘moving’ a section of wall so that it creates a ‘door’ in one wall, while shutting off another section of alleyway. Only hedge-walls can be moved; tampering with the stone walls removes the Sapper from game-play. Also, only Sappers are allowed to affect hedge-walls; anyone trying to burn a hole through the hedge or otherwise affect it is penalized.

All players are allowed and expected to use dueling type magical attacks, defenses, and distractions during play. Invisibility, magical decoys and disguises are expected. The primary exception is the King, who must remain both visible and recognizable as the King, and he couldn’t teleport, except when touched by a Lancer. Players can carry four potions and as many Ofuda into the maze as they feel comfortable with. Players that the referees judge as incapacitated are teleported off the field and replaced.

Familiars are barred from the field, but a player can take as many carded goblins with them as they want. The catch being that a played goblin is open and can be re-captured by another player. Goblins played by the other side are regarded as fair game.

Penalties are punished by time-outs without replacement, by forfeiture of one of the tagging balls to the other side, by temporary confiscation of a talisman, or by expulsion (with replacement) from the field.

Hopping over a wall is allowed, but dangerous. Flying over the maze is allowed, but it makes the flier an easy target, and isn’t often done.

From there, the rules of Warmaze devolve into regulations, specifications and precedents.

*****

Cassie and Lexie got into an involved argument at lunch over the naming of the teams. Since ‘Vic’s team’ and ‘Vickie’s team’ would be confusing, they had to come up with something else. After a lot of nonsense with ‘Angels vs. Devils’, ‘Freaks vs. Paladins’ and ‘Team Dylan vs. Team Lexie’ they decided on ‘Home vs. Visitors’. Lexie insisted that since Vic was the real person, that Vickie’s partisans had to be the ‘Visitors’.

*****

Due to Eva’s drumming up publicity with her bet mongering, the attendance for the deciding Warmaze match was pretty good. For a Friday afternoon, anyway. Since they had to look down into a narrow maze, the bleachers were very high and rather steep. Even so, most of the spectators preferred to watch using various scrying devices.

“There’s Eva,” Frankie pointed out. Eva was in the front row, busily working on her wager sheets. “Hey, where’s your family?”

“I invited the fam, but the Mom said that they weren’t going to ‘encourage this sort of nonsense’, and opted out for the entire family. I think that she’s still pissed about missing the second part of Mass on Sunday.”

“Whoa, bummer.”

“Yeah, well, Mundanes don’t really dig Warmaze anyway. Besides, it’s 4 on a Friday afternoon. If I my future weren’t at stake _I_ wouldn’t be here.”

“Hey, Vickie, any chance that you could talk Cassie into moving me up from the Utility Squad?” Cassie had thrashed out the squad assignments with Dylan. She and Dylan were to be the starting Lancers (Shock! Shock!). Yaz and Robin were to be the starting Bulwarks. Chelkiss and Cunliffe where to be the starting Trappers, and Jase and Leslie Turnbow were to be the starting Sappers. That left Frankie, Trixie, Doug and Comstock as the Utility players, who would step in as needed. “I mean, will you just LOOK at the great Ofudas I’ve got up my sleeve?”

Vickie took a polite look, and her jaw almost hit the turf. “Frankie, where did you GET this stuff? Agravitic Vortex? Vivistat Dimension? Associative Reversion? This is some very heavy mojo!”

Frankie grinned. “Linus Matherson. He claims that he had a big hand in making his big brother the living legend that he was. And from these, I don’t think that he’s exactly talking out of his ass.”

“Still...Vivistat Dimension?”

Frankie grinned voluptuously. “I think he has a crush on me. And, y’know, if he weren’t a year younger than me...”

“AND a Major League Jinx.”

“ah - YEAH. Major consideration there. So, any chance?”

“Hey, how do _I_ enter into it? It’s only my LIFE we’re fighting over” Vickie looked at the Ofuda stack enviously. “Any chance I could, y’know, borrow one of those Vivistat Dimension slips?”

“And let VIC have a chance at it?”

Then Cassie called a last minute huddle, as everyone showed what goblins they were going to be taking into the maze, and specified which ones they wanted back, if someone else carded them. The also discussed what talismans, potions, and Ofuda they were carrying. Vickie was carrying Chelkiss’ Shield talisman, a very versatile ‘Eyepiece’ amulet, a couple of ‘Heal Bruise’ potions, and every Warmaze player’s best friend, the ‘Charge’ potion, which was basically an infusion of raw magical power, for when your battery starts to run low.

Finally, it was game time. The Head Referee called Vickie and the ‘Visiting’ team to the center of the maze, where the ‘Home’ team was already assembled. “Hold Up!” Cassie yelled when she saw the first string of the Merlin Voc Dragons assembled beside Lexie. “What are THEY doing here? Principal Kelley said-”

“-that the team would require special written permission to play for the ‘Home Team’,” Lexie finished for her. Lexie stuck a hand in the helmet that she was carrying, and fished out a folded piece of paper, which she handed to Cassie. “Special written permission for the First String to play in this game. Coach Blackwood insisted on writing it out, before he left school grounds.”

As one person, the ‘Visiting Team’ turned to the stands, where Eva DuPraeve was giving them the sharktooth grin.

The Head Ref blew his whistle. “Okay, for this game, the normal rules of Warmaze, as approved by the District School Board, still apply, except for ONE set of exceptions. There will be only ONE King in this game. Instead of capturing the other team’s King, the object of this game will be to get your team’s King to the ‘Throne’ on the far side of the maze. The Lancers will each have talismans that can change the other team’s King into their King. As there is only one ‘Bottle’ talisman, the Home Team’s Lancers will have a modified standard Warmaze teleportation talisman, which will send the ‘Bottle’ talisman to either Lancer, as needed. The King will begin play here in the center, and will not be able to move from this spot until released by one of the other players. Miss O’Bryan, all the restrictions that apply to the King position are in force here. No Invisibility, Disguise, or teleportation spells are allowed. Do we understand each other?”

Vickie nodded.

“Finally, you realize that you are committing yourself to this. Once this starts, there’s no stopping or running away. You either win, or you lose. Period. Do you agree to this?”

Vickie nodded again and the Ref touched her with the ‘Bottle’ talisman. He spelled it all out for Vic as he had for Vickie. Vic nodded, and the Ref blew his whistle and got on his levitation disk, signaling the start of the game. The two teams headed for their starting ends of the maze. Cassie looked back at Vic as he pulled on his helmet, and couldn’t help but suspect that that was the entire reason that Vic had been so generous about allowing Vickie those days in the first place, so that he’d be in the saddle at the start of the game.

When the field was clear, except for Vic in the middle, the Hedgemaster poured the contents of two pitchers on the ground. A thick mist covered the field as sections of the maze rose, forming granite walls, while other sections grew high bramble hedges in patterns that neither team knew the exact details of. When the hedge was completely grown, the mist faded, and both teams faced an undiscovered country for them to explore and wreck.

The Head Ref took his place hovering over the center of the maze, his two assistants took their places over the other sections, and finally the whistle blew starting play. Cassie and Robin went head on, with Jase blazing an alley straight through the hedges. Normally, a team would explore their section of the maze first, determining routes and laying traps, before sending teams in to explore hostile territory. But this was a very different kind of game. Controlling the King was vital. Cassie and Robin had to get Vickie back into ‘friendly territory’, so that she could learn the lay of the land and where Chelkiss and Cunliffe were setting their traps.

Jase cleared the hedge just in time to see a figure in the colors of the ‘Home’ team drop into the alley just behind the far hedge. “He’s jumping over the hedges! Why didn’t we think of that?”

“Because it’s stupid, that why!” Robin snarled as she let off a Battlestar that caught the opposing player, square in the chest. He fell in a heap on the alley. “What was he thinking, coming up with no backup like that? I thought that they were better than that!”

“We are!” Tobias Smith, the ‘Home’ team’s other Lancer said as he and Bill ‘Booster’ Sujimoto appeared at the opening of the hedge, and the decoy image disappeared. Tobias immediately tagged Jase with a ball, freezing him in his tracks. Cassie returned fire with her ball, but Booster blocked the tag.

Tobias and Cassie both made a dash for the restraining ‘box’, but Cassie got there first and pulled Vickie away from Tobias. “Hey, don’t be that way, Babe!” Tobias smirked as he reeked masculine charm and virility. “C’mon over here and give the Tobester some LOVE!” Cassie, Robin and Vickie stopped dead in their tracks. Their rational minds knew that Tobias was just using his trademark ‘Don Juan Aura’ spell, but their hormones weren’t having any of it. As far as their metabolisms were concerned, each of them had just met the man who would father their children.

Jase snapped out of his paralysis just in time, whipped an Ofuda out of ‘sleeve-space’, and threw it at Booster with uncanny accuracy. As the three girls inched toward Tobias against their wills, the sumo-sized Japanese-American boy shimmered and changed conformation, but not size. “Oh, BABY!” Billy, now Billie-Jo, trilled and lunged at the pocket-sized parcel of beefcake.

This gave Cassie, Robin and Vickie a chance to snap out of it, but it was too late. Tobias managed to squirm out of Billie-Jo’s clutches long enough to slap Vickie on the shoulder with his talisman, and Vickie disappeared inside the ball of red bands, leaving Vic behind. Vic immediately Powerjumped over the hedge in the direction of reinforcements, and the game was on for real.

*****

Both teams opened up their bags of tricks and went at it with a will. Lancers used Illusions to mislead the opposing King into traps. Trappers created obviously Illusory ‘hedges’ which had traps behind them. Jase and Leslie managed to trap Vic in a Hedge Cage, a closed off circular alley that just kept repeating itself, for a while, until Dan Allegare, one of the opposing Sappers, busted Vic out. Yasmin was temporarily incapacitated when the ‘Goblin’ that she ‘captured’ turned out to be a disguised Reversion Hex, that turned her back into Oswaldo. But, one of her potions was the Restoration Potion that she’d brewed out of the ‘Naughty Tentacle Monster’, so she was up and running in a trice. Vic tried to use a Darkness Field in conjunction with his ‘Eyepiece’ amulet, but that tripped him up, since the amulet couldn’t see in the dark and invisible players at the same time.

*****

Vickie wasn’t doing so hot, either. Lexie got on her tail and threw an Ofuda that placed a monkey on Vickie’s back. A literal monkey that kept screaming at the top of its lungs, letting Lexie know exactly where Vickie was. With the shrieking monkey as a guide, Lexie got on Vickie’s tail and stuck like glue. Vickie tried to shake her by doing lateral jumps over the hedge, but Lexie managed to maneuver her against the stone wall, limiting how effective that was. Then Lexie steered Vickie into the only ‘blind alley’ that the stone walls formed, trapping her. “Okay, Vickie, just stand still for Mama, and I’ll take that nasty old monkey off your back.” Lexie advanced, the ‘Bottle’ talisman outstretched. Vickie shouldered the monkey into the ‘Bottle’ talisman, trapping the beast, and slipped under Lexie’s grasp.

“Here!” Vickie slapped something into Lexie’s hand.

Lexie felt something hit her like an intangible sledgehammer. “Wha’?” Lexie slurred. “Wha’ didjew DO to me?”

“Remember that ‘Doofus’ Hex that you tried to slip me last week?” Vickie grinned savagely through her face-guard, “I thought that I ought to get it back to you. Oh, and do remember, that you can only be replaced when you’re incapacitated. And this doesn’t count as incapacitation.” Vickie feinted, got Lexie off her vastly overreacting guard, and slipped past her. “So long, Spazzo!” she sang out as she pelted down the alley.

*****

And the hits kept on coming. Booster Sujimoto was back in the game (Jase’s Skank hex only had a few minutes duration, as an Ofuda), and he was pissed. But Chelkiss shrank him down to size. Literally. Past that, even. Down to twelve inches tall, which allowed Chelkiss and Winkler to simply step over him in their way down the alley. Peter Alain managed to set a very nice little trap that caused Vickie to be only able to move by dancing to the merry polka beat, music provided by the spell, which also let everyone know where she was. Vickie was getting the hang of dancing as fast as she could, when she ran into another trap, and suddenly she danced right into the arms of Tobias, who gave her a quick, unwanted kiss before he tagged Vic back into existence.

However, the Polka Trap had its drawbacks - both sides knew exactly where Vickie was, and now that the music had stopped, the ‘Visitors’ knew that Vic was back in play. “Shit!” Tobias cursed.

“What’s the matter?”

“We’re surrounded.”

“Okay, no biggie.” Vic pulled out an Ofuda, tapped it against his sapphire heartstone, and suddenly eight ‘Vics’ appeared and each ran off down a different alley.

*FWEEEET!* The Referee’s whistle sounded. “Foul! Freeze where you are!”

“What’s the matter?” Vic yelled up at the Ref floating above the maze.

“Violation of the King Visibility Rule.”

“What are you talking about?” Vic sputtered, “Decoys have been ruled as legal for Kings!”

“That decision was reversed by the International Warmaze Commission!” The Ref floated down and produced one of the ‘Valve’ talismans. “You.” He pointed at Tobias. “Fifteen yards. Now.” Tobias trudged away, and when the Ref got the signal that Tobias was out of range, he touched Vic with the Valve talisman.

*****

But Vickie didn’t last long this time, and soon Vic was back in charge. Not that Robin Winkler was about to let him stay that way. Vic came charging down the alley at her. Robin was in her ‘Blonde Amazon’ form, so he was expecting her to try and power him down. Instead, she snapped her fingers. Suddenly Vic’s Warmaze uniform was several sizes too small, and the crotch wasn’t designed for a man. As he was on his knees, almost gelded by his own inseam, he heard Robin call out, “Oh, Dylan!”

*****

Dylan, Robin and Chelkiss formed a ‘flying squad’ to protect Vickie down the alleys. However, the problem with concentrating your players is that it allows the opposition to concentrate their players as well. And, it makes you very vulnerable to certain kinds of traps. For instance, the ‘flying squad’ ran into a quadruple Ironwall trap that caged them in. Dylan calmly held up a finger and concentrated. His body trembled for a moment, and then grew to heroic proportions, with powerful arms and limbs. He tore one of the Ironwalls of its anchors. On the other side were four of the Home team. Tobias grinned at them and tagged Dylan with the ball. Chelkiss threw the Ironwall at them. Cissy Hawkins just barely managed to catch the Ironwall and disperse it. Mary Tallboyce, Peter Alain’s female counterpart, grinned. “Oh, Puh-Leeze, Chelkiss! Everyone KNOWS that trick by now!” She held up a glowing green piece of glassy crystal.

Chelkiss calmly walked over to Mary, took the crystal out of her hand can crushed it in one powerful hand. The ‘dust’ turned to confetti before it hit the ground. “How?” Mary gasped. Chelkiss just pulled his uniform open, revealing not a red ‘S’ on a blue shirt, but a golden thunderbolt on a red shirt. SHAZAM! Then he picked her up with one hand and gently threw her all the way to her beginning end of the maze.

Chelkiss reached for Cissy, but Tobias made a tsk-ing sound. “Now, now, Darryl! You know better than to treat a lady like that!” He produced two Ofuda, which he quickly threw at Chelkiss and Winkler.

“HAH!” Chelkiss jeered, “What was that supposed to be?”

“Oh, just take a look at HER,” Tobias pointed at Winkler, “and you tell me.”

Chelkiss looked at Winkler. Winkler looked at Chelkiss. Winkler was in her absolutely gorgeous ‘Blonde Anime Amazon’ dueling form. Chelkiss was wearing his new ‘Captain Marvel’ form. He was an almost perfect male specimen. She was a vision of loveliness. They felt that immortal, irresistible attraction. Neither of them had had a lot of experience dealing with sexual attraction. A second later, they were all over each other, bearing each other down to the ground.

Vickie watched this spectacle for a second, and then realized that she was wide open. She ducked under and around Smith and took to her heels.

And promptly fell into the old ‘Invisible Hedge’ snare two turns down the line, where a section of the hedge grabbed her in leafy tendrils. She was just burning herself free when Tobias ran up and tagged her.

Vic was just pulling himself free, when Tobias stiffened. “What’s the matter, Toby?”

Toby reached over and pulled an Ofuda off of his back. “Nada. Must be a dud. Okay, quick, we gotta go this way!”

“That way? But the goals THAT way!”

“Concentration of opposition that way; that’s why your other half was headed there. DelaFontaine opened up a short cut over that way.”

Vic nodded and followed. And he nearly lost it when Tobias shoved him right into Dylan’s waiting ‘valve’ talisman.

Once her transformation was over, Vickie looked at Tobias and said, “Hunh?”

Then Cassie and Trixie came storming out from around a corner and grabbed both of them. “What just happened?” Vickie asked.

Trixie grinned. “The Ref pulled Chelkiss and Winkler as ‘incapacitated’. They’re still trying to pry them apart. Soooo-” She held up her Ofuda stack. “Associative Reversion. For the next five minutes, Smitty’s gonna see all of his friends as enemies, and all of his enemies as friends.”

“Very nice!” Vickie gave Trixie a quick pat on the back. “Now, let’s see if I can sniff out any trouble ahead.” Vickie paused and gave a quick deep breath. Then she started sniffing feverously. “Stop! There’s something VERY wrong here.” She sniffed around and finally stopped. “This is weird. I smell trouble everywhere. No, wait a minute! The trouble’s coming from...ME!”

“Vic must be pulling a fast one,” Cassie hissed.

“Of COURSE he’s pulling a fast one!” Trixie said exasperatedly. “He sicced the school Warmaze team on us!”

“That’s IT!” Dylan shouted. “That’s what’s been bugging me!”

“Come again?”

“This is the school Warmaze team! They’re supposed to be the best! So, why aren’t they mopping up the maze with us?”

“Hey, we have the Fab Five with us! They’re all in the Top Twenty! And we ain’t exactly wussoids ourselves!” Cassie shot back

But Vickie got it. “But, they’re a TEAM! We’re a bunch of tough individuals, they’re a TEAM. They’re going easy on us. Why?”

Cassie chewed it over. “Saving themselves for tomorrow's game?”

“With ‘Deliver Us From Eva’ looking over their shoulders?” Dylan shook his head. “She’s got too much riding on this, and they know it. They’re setting us up for something.”

Then one of the hedges formed a ‘moon gate’ and Leslie Turnbow stepped through. “What’s the matter? Why are you guys standing still? I think that the opposition just caught on to you!”

Vickie snapped her fingers. “YES! Leslie, do you have a psychic link with Darryl?”

Leslie blushed and said, “err, No.”

“What about Winkler?”

“Well, yeah...”

“Have they gotten over that Lip-lock spell yet?”

Leslie furrowed her brow. “Yep!”

“Trixie, go to the exit and trade off with Chelkiss. Leslie, tell Robin to pass along to him to meet us at the blind alley in five.”

“What?” Trixie looked heartbroken. “But my stack...”

“I need Chelkiss! Vic is just the sort who’d try to pull a double-cross by booby trapping the matrixes somehow! Chelkiss helped to build the matrixes, so he’s the best one to ask what Vic pulled!”

“If he’d seen anything he would have said something! And only Vic would exactly what he did!”

“I know! I have an idea! Go!”

*****

Four minutes later, Chelkiss was waiting for them in the blind alley when they came running up. They’d managed to keep Vickie herself, largely by not heading for the matrix. He threw up a Stonewall barrier, and gave them a moment to catch their breath. “What’s the scam?”

Vickie gave him the thumbnail sketch. “Well, I did see something when I examined the matrix plans, but it was a flaw that threatened VIC, not you.”

“Oh?  *pant* What was it?”

“Vic’s design was first rate, but there’s an essential flaw in it.”

“Which- *heave* -Was?”

“By cutting the feed into your anima, he caused a dissonance affect that heterodynes with-” 

“In ENGLISH, please?”

“Feedback doesn’t just turn people the other sex, start PK cyclones and stuff like that. It also creates Bad Luck, remember?”

“Yeah. *Wheeze!*” Vickie nodded. “So does that stupid dam that’s inside me now. I have two Banestones full of Mala Fortuna, not that Vic’s picked up on that. So?”

“That Buffer design of his generates a dissonance that creates Bad Luck. Every time that he’ll use magic, he’ll generate at least a petal of Bad Luck. If that Buffer of his goes online, he’ll be a bigger jinx than Linus Matheson.”

“Oh, ICK! But how could Vic turn that to his advantage?”

“I dunno. And there’s no way to ask him.”

Vickie grinned. “We don’t ask him - we ask ME.”

“But the Sigil of Saturn...”

Vickie held her hand to Leslie. “The Pass-Door Talisman?”

“But your containment has already-”

“Not the Feedback dam - the Sigil of Saturn. It’s a barrier, right? And right now, what secret is Vic trying to keep from us, more than anything else?”

Chelkiss nodded and took the Pass-Door talisman. He found the Sigil of Saturn on Vickie’s brow and set the talisman against it. At first, the Sigil held firm but then it bent, giving way. Vickie flexed her telepathic gifts and shared the secrets that Vic had stored there. “Got it!” Chelkiss said, and then let the Pass-Door affect lapse.

“You understand that?” Vickie asked, as she struggled to integrate the memories that passed with her own memories.

Chelkiss nodded. “Classic Vic trap. Both of the matrixes on either side of this field have the same basic pattern, only set at different threshold points. But the matrix that’s supposed to be YOURS has a ‘switch’ on it. When the game started, Lexie held back and ‘flipped the switch’, so that now, BOTH matrixes will create Vic’s containment, not yours. The Dragons are holding back, because they know that it doesn’t matter who gets to which throne, ‘cause either way, they’ll win. So, why wear yourself out in a match that you know you’re gonna win, either way?”

“In that case, they’ll sort of LET us win - could you switch back the switch?”

“Nope. Even if Vic would let me, the switch is in the matrix, not in the buffer enchantment itself. Once it’s up, it’s up. Period. I was hoping to blackmail Vic with it, if we lost. But now, I see that even if Vic got down and begged me to, there’s no way to re-set the effect, once it’s in place.”

“So, where’s the switch?”

Chelkiss shook his head. “Too complex, too technical to get, just from telepathy. Only Vic and Lexie know how to switch it back. They created it together.”

Vickie smiled an evil sly fox grin. “Then we make it Vic and Lexie’s problem, and let THEM clean up his mess for once!” She pulled a pen and Ofuda slip from a pocket - yes, folks, Warmaze is the only contact team sport where pen and paper are field equipment! - and began writing. “Darryl, can you spell out in a nutshell, where Vic’s buffer thingie goes wrong?”

“It’ll be a little sketchy, but yeah. But why would Vic believe me?”

“Because, he understands, really understands those matrixes. He didn’t spot the flaw, but once you point it out, he’ll get it and know that we’re telling the truth.” Vickie gave an even more evil grin. “Besides, I’ll give him an excellent reason to believe.” She finished off her writing by drawing out a crude Stanz diagram. Then she concentrated and two eerie blue stones appeared in her hand.

“What are those?”

“Those Banestones that I mentioned. I had them ready to be teleported, in case I thought that Vic’s team managed to really get me in a position where it looked like I was gonna gonna be turned in sight of Vic’s throne or something. If I have these stones on me when the ‘Bottle’ effect goes on, then Vic will experience the streak of Bad Luck to end all streaks of Bad Luck.”

“So, when he reads his Stanz diagram.”

“He’ll believe whatever we tell him.”

That done, Dylan pointed out, “There’s no way that the opposition doesn’t know that we’re in here. If anything we’re probably losing all sorts of Cred by hiding out here. They’re on the other side of that Stonewall, waiting for us.”

“So?” Cassie asked, “We let them change Vickie into Vic, and take let them escort him to the throne.”

Chelkiss shook his head. “Not a do. They’re here because Eva told them to be here, not ‘cause they’re on Vic’s side. And Eva’s stuck her neck out a mile on those bets. If they let Vickie’s side win, Eva will be all over them, Warmaze team or not. They’ll drag Vic to his throne and make him activate it, if they have to.”

“Right.” Vickie nodded. “The only person that Vic can count on at this point is Lexie.”

Chelkiss furrowed his brow. “Robin says that Lexie is caught in the Barb Spider trap in the Southwest section of the maze.”

Cassie grinned lasciviously at Chelkiss. “Oh, and exactly WHEN did you create a psychic link with Winkler, hummm?” Chelkiss just blushed.

Leslie, Cassie and Dylan formed a variation of the ‘Power Pryamid’ gambit that the Paracelsus poachers had used as Vickie pumped power into it. When the whirling Battlestars were a small galaxy, they arched the tiny blue suns over the Stonewall, and let them destroy the barrier - and whatever else was behind it. The Stonewall crumbled, revealing most of the ‘Home’ team, in a charred, dazed heap.

Vickie scurried over them, and headed for the southwest section of the maze, as the rest of her team was busy taking advantage of the ‘Home’ team’s weakness. Even with most of the Home team still reeling from the Battlestar barrage, Peter Alain and Lilly DelaFontaine the Home team’s open sapper and trapper, had been working overtime. She had to batter her way through a quicksand trap, an infinite back-step trap, and a particularly over-friendly Tree-hugger. Then, mysteriously, it got easier. Vickie laughed when it occurred to her that Alain and DelaFontaine were trying to ‘sucker’ her into Lexie’s reach!

Lexie was just pulling herself out of the Barb Spider’s web when Vickie got there. Vickie tackled Lexie out of the web and was sprawled out on top of her.  “Hi, Lexie! Here, these are for you!” She shoved the slips of paper into Lexie’s mouth.

Lexie may still have had the ‘Doofus’ hex on her, but she was still sharp enough to summon the ‘Bottle’ talisman to her and tag Vickie while her target was still on top of her. Vic shook his head, and looked down. “Lexie! Are you okay?”

Lexie spat out the slips of paper and said, “No! Your stoopid twin sister stuck me with my own ‘Doofus’ hex!”

“What’s this?” Vic picked up the piece of paper that had his name on it.

“You could get OFF OF ME, and THEN read it!”

“Oh, right. Sorry, Lex.” Vic pulled off of her and looked at the piece of paper.

Hey, Idiot! Guess What? Your trap has a BIG glitch in it! If you manage to lay your version of the buffer on us, then you’ll - she went into a brief explanation of the flaw - ‘So, unless you wanna be a Jinx that makes Unlucky Linus look like an entire field of 4-leaf clovers, you’re gonna have to fix it. Already, you have such a huge backlog of Bad Luck, that I’m amazed that the Earth hasn’t swallowed us up! Check the Stanz diagram, if you don’t believe me! Also, Darryl Chelkiss was nice enough to spell out exactly what you did wrong, since we all know that you’re not terribly bright. Well, Evil Twin, it’s all up to you, now! One way or another, I’m not gonna have to deal with it!

Love, your Smarter Half,

Vickie

Vic broke out in a heavy sweat. Damn, he should have known that that ‘Breakthrough’ talisman was too good to be true! Dammit, EVERY spell has a flaw or limitation, he should have known that! He passed the note over to Lexie, and read Chelkiss’ notes, just in case his viler half was pulling something.

No such luck. It all made too much sense.

Luck.

He hurriedly checked his Stanz diagram. Normally, a Stanz diagram just glows. This one erupted in a ball of eerie Banefire. As one, Vic and Lexie’s jaws hit the grass. “_oh, shit,_” Vic whispered.

Lexie looked over at him. “Maybe it’s a trick?”

Suddenly the Barb Spider web trap kicked into operation again, ensnaring them both. “Not a chance,” Vic said fatalistically.

He used a ‘Quickrust’ spell, and the metal of the web burst into flames, giving them both mild burns. Vic took Lexie by the shoulders. “Lexie, you stay here. It’s not safe to be anywhere near me right now, especially while you’re spazzing the way you are. I’ll manage to get to the Throne and re-set the matrix. The bitch wins.”

“No!” Lexie yelled, over-reacting, even without the prompting of the ‘Doofus’ hex. “Can’t we just walk off the field and call it a draw?”

Vic shook his head. “No, I’m committed to this remember? But you can walk off the field, no problem.”

“No.” Even with the hex amplifying her reactions, Lexie was adamant and sure. “You need me. With that much Bad Luck, you’d screw up the matrix. I’m the only one who re-set it right.”

“Dammit, Lexie, I’m not going to risk you-” Lexie swung both of their face guards open and shut him up by giving him a deep passionate kiss.

She broke the kiss and said, “-and I’m not risking you. Let’s GO!”

As the crowd in the stand hooted, Lexie and Vic started the long trek across the maze. It started off small- hedge openings that closed on them as they were inside, traps that they by-passed triggering anyway, Vic got tagged by a stray ball, and stuff like that. Then it got nasty.

*****

Up to then, Eva had been enjoying the game. Nothing like knowing that the fix was in, in your favor. After all, the entire point was who would walk off the field, not which throne was reached. She was gleefully tallying up her winnings, when the crowd started started yelling at the field. She looked up, and picked out the matte white King-

-who was heading across the maze toward the WRONG throne! “WHAT?” she shrieked. She immediately cast an illusion of her own face way above the maze. “WAKE UP, YOU IDIOTS! THAT IDIOT O’BRYAN’S GOING THE WRONG WAY! STOP HIM, BEFORE HE HITS THE WRONG MATRIX!”

Knowing which side their bread was buttered on, the Home team scrambled after Vic and Lexie.

*****

Suddenly, there was a rumbling under Vic and Lexie’s feet, and the entire alley became a mass of brambles. Not really caring about penalties or free fire, Vic produced an Ofuda with the Word of the Wind on it, and lifted both of them into the air.

Of course, that only made them easy targets for Allegare’s Powerbow bolt.

*****

The ‘Visitors’ team stood together on the field, and watched as Vic and Lexie bounced from one trap to another, hitting every possible snag and yet still managing to inch, step by step, closer to the Visiting team’s throne. The Home team tried to slow them down, but they only got tangled up in the cascade of misfires and catastrophes.

“So, do you think that we ought’a help them?” Leslie asked.

“Go into THAT?” Yasmin shook her head. “Not a chance. Nope, all that we gotta do is keep them from coming this way. That, and pray that Vic’s bad luck doesn’t start tearing the field apart.”

Suddenly, the ground under their feet began to tremble, and Stone walls started jutting out of the ground. Every square on the field rose up, one at a time, reaching up as high as twenty feet. Then, they started to teeter and wobble, and they started collapsing.

Cassie glared at Yasmin. “You and your BIG MOUTH!”

*****

Lexie and Vic rode the last toppling wall over the last few hedges into the throne room. Or, more accurately past the throne room. They had to blast the throne room out from under the granite rubble. Lexie scrambled to find the ‘switch’. Tobias Smith and Cissy Hawkins ran up, and Cissy said, “What the HELL are you DOING?”

“Saving my own ass!” Vic shot back.

“Listen up, Vic,” Toby said gently but firmly, “You’ve been hit by an Associative Reversion spell. You’re doing exactly the OPPOSITE of what you really want-”

“Ah, give it a rest, he can’t understand you this way!” Cissy smacked him. “Listen up, O’Bryan! I DEMAND that you fix that Matrix! RIGHT NOW! Do it!”

“Thanks, Cissy!” Lexie said, “That’s just the boost that I needed!” She finished the re-setting the switch. “Go for it, Vic!”

Toby and Cissy both jumped at Vic at the same time, and would have tackled him, but at that precise moment, Chelkiss’ Shield talisman accidentally activated and inflated to the size of a house wall. Toby and Cissy were blocked by a red-white-and-blue wall, and from behind that wall, a flare of foxfire shot up. “Awww...MAAANNN...Eva’s gonna KILL us!” Cissy moaned.

*****

From the sidelines with all the other familiars, Slyboots watched the proceedings serenely.  *And you just know that Vickie’s going to complain about having periods*

*****

Up in the stands, the spectators watched in dumb-struck awe at the devastation. There wasn’t a noise, except for Eva screaming, “IT’S A TIE! HER MATRIX WAS ACTIVATED, BUT HE ACTIVATED IT! NO WIN, NO LOSS! IT’S A TIE!

*****

Safe in their section of the field, the Five Fs, their boyfriends and the Fab Five looked at the wreckage of the Warmaze field. “Well, look at the bright side!” Doug offered. “Tomorrow’s game is an Away game!”

*****

Lexie woke up, bruised and battered, in the nurse’s office. She was on a cot, one of many occupied by moaning and groaning. Chandra climbed up into her arms and comforted her. “What happened?”

“I think that you got caught in the back blast, when my transformation expelled the last of that Bad Luck," came a pained voice on a cot next to her. Lexie looked over and saw Vickie laying on a cot next to her, an ice bag on her head.

“What are YOU doing here? You didn’t have to wade through all that chaos!”

“No, but the back-blast also destroyed that Sigil of Saturn blockage. Now, I have to deal with two weeks’ worth of memories to get straight. Talk about a headache!”

*humphf!* “I should hope SO, after all that you put us through!” Lexie scooped up Chandra and sat up. Then she noticed. “Hey, what happened to the ‘Doofus’ Hex?”

“Simple. The Doofus hex drops if you do something cool in front of an audience, right?”

“Yeah. So?”

“So, you stuck with Vic, through thick and thin! You waltzed through a gauntlet of traps and malfunctioning maze, because you wouldn’t leave Vic in the lurch. How cool is that?”

“Well, it’s nice to know that somebody thinks that!”

“Everyone thinks that, Lex. Otherwise you’d still be jerking around like a cheap marionette.”

“A fat lot of good that’s going to do me, when ‘Deliver Us From Eva’ comes for my scalp!”

“Not to worry, Lex. By the time that Eva stops running, trying to duck the people that she owes for those bets - including and especially my crew - she’ll have a lot more to worry about than causing you grief.”

“And if she does anyway?”

“Then come find me and my crew. We’re always up for putting it to Eva.”

“And WHY would you do THAT?” Lexie sniffed.

“Because you’re a class act, that’s why.” Vickie shifted her ice bag and reached for her purse. “Oh, that reminds me, Lex. Vic thinks that you’re real special.”

“Really?” Lexie leaned over, touched. “How do you know that?”

“Hey, the Sigil is down. I can remember everything that Vic did and said and thought again. No matter what it looks like, I’m really a part of Vic, remember?”

*And it’s about time that YOU remembered that!* Slyboots flowed up into Vickie’s arms.

“Anyway,” Vickie continued, “it’s nice to see that my thicker side-”

*Vickie!*

“That VIC has finally hooked up with someone who actually has some class and substance. Lord, I worry about that idiot sometimes.”

*Oh, YOU should talk!*

Vickie found what she was rummaging for. “And, on that note.” She pulled out the Sapphire Heart Matrix. “Vic was going to give you this, after the game. Well, he’s not gonna be around for at least a month or so, and I completely agree with him that you really deserve this.” She handed the glittering stone to Lexie.

"‘I really deserve this’?” Lexie looked at glittering stone. “What? It has a hex on it?”

“No tricks this time, Lexie,” Vickie moaned. “It’s for real. Vic has real feelings for you, and he wants you to have this, to show how he feels.”

Lexie reached her hand out, but paused before taking the stone. “And what about you?”

“Hey, I’m a part of Vic! Of course, I think you’re special. How could I feel otherwise. But don’t get any funny ideas. I already have a boyfriend.”

*Hallelujah! The Rock finally splits! She gets it!*

Lexie smiled and accepted the shining gem. She leaned back, ignoring the aches and pains, and admired the gift from the boy who had given her his heart.

FINIS