Arlo Pike stood in the courtyard in the center of the campus. He put his bag down on

a nearby stone bench. He sat beside it. He thought about what he was going to do.

Pavel and Jason would have to get Pavel’s wife to finish the job. All he had to do was

open the door and leave it open for them to find. He didn’t know if she could do what

was needed, but he had an estimate that she could give the Alvas a run for his money.

Posing as a distraction was not his first choice, but he didn’t see any other way to

save the city.

Bearding monsters in there lair was more what Jason would do. His partner lived for

that sort of thing.

Pike reached out and grabbed the edge of the door left on the school grounds with his

talent. He forced it to open with his mind. He could feel the eye of his talent defining

what the thing was, and pushing it open so he could step through. He stood and

walked through the arch.

The door shut behind him. He wasn’t concerned. The others would find his bag and

realize what he had done. They would not be happy, but there was a good chance he

would be dead so they couldn’t complain about what he had done.

Pike found himself in a garden covered with plants and flowers he wasn’t familiar

with. Some of them turned as he passed. He supposed if he fell off the trail for any

reason, they would be on him in a second.

He followed the path laid out with cobblestones until he reached an open air pavilion.

The place looked huge from a distance and the effect only increased as he walked

closer. He noted the group under the red shingled roof and wondered if he had done

the right thing after all.

Maybe he should have requested assistance before trying out his scheme.

Pike decided he didn’t have anything to lose at this point. He shrugged in his coat.

His talent for finding would just have to carry him through like it had so many other

times.

He stepped under the pavilion, nodding at the girls in their school uniforms, and the

Alvas in his rags and bandages. He inspected what looked like a layout of tea, finding

most of it edible or drinkable. He poured himself a cup of tea, and picked up a biscuit

to munch. He nodded as he crunched on the biscuit.

“Hello,” Pike said around a bite of biscuit. He sipped the tea to clear his mouth. “How

do you do?”

“Who are you?,” demanded the Alvas. “How did you get in here?”

“Arlo Pike, finder for the Guard,” said Pike. “I’m here to ask you to stop performing

your transformations on these school girls and turn yourself in. I imagine the city will

talk to your local ambassador, and then you will be deported.”

“What are you talking about?,” asked one of the girls.

“This Alvas has been turning girls into monsters,” said Pike. He sipped the rest of the

tea in his cup. “The city is going to want to talk to him about the deaths that caused,

and they are going to demand he fix the damage. After that, I assume he will be sent

back across the border.”

“But we’ve been saving lives,” said one of the other girls.

“Your powers change you into what you’re hunting,” said Pike. He poured himself

another cup of tea. “This is good tea.”

“He’s lying,” said the Alvas. “The city Guard would have shown up in force, not send

one man.”

“My partner is outside the door,” said Pike. “I just came in by myself in the hopes of

a peaceful resolution. Jason is a monster hunter, and he considers you a monster. If

I had brought him in with me, he would have cut you down like that. This way, we

don’t have to hurt anybody, and everything can be patched over. Jason’s way, we

send you home in a box and tell the Alvas royalty what happens when they let one of

their renegades run loose. Also a consultant on this wants to talk to you too.”

“What do you mean changes you into what we’re hunting?,” asked one of the girls.

They were looking at Pike and the Alvas with horror.

“What consultant?,” said the Alvas.

“Hold on,” said Pike. He held up the tea cup. “I can only answer one question at a

time. Girls, you have been turned into baby monsters. Every time you change form,

you feed your eventual transformation into people eaters. We’re clear on this, right?”

“We’re turning into witches,” said one of the girls. The ripple that went through them

was unsettling to Pike. He gritted his teeth at what may have been a bad idea.

“Yes,” said Pike. “I suppose none of you knew this.”

“You’re right about that,” said the first girl. “You’re turning us into witches?”

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“He’s lying,” said the Alvas. He gestured at the finder with one of his bandaged

hands. “There’s no way the process can do that, and there’s no way he could know

that if it did.”

“We already found your whole team from Marsh Excellence,” said Pike. “But you

know that already. Jason said he saw you following him around.”

“Shut up,” said the Alvas. “I’ve had enough of your lies.”

“Did you really think you were going to get away with it?,” asked Pike. “We

identified eight of your victims, and their lairs. As soon as the Guard is done talking

to you, we’re going to wipe them out on our own, or force your countrymen to do it

for us under the agreement. You’ve accomplished nothing.”

“You have been lying to us this whole time, haven’t you?,” said the eldest, the first

girl. “You have been using us. We thought we were helping the city. Instead, we’ve

just been making things worse.”

The girls emitted a soft glow one after the other. Pike hurried to finish his tea. He

didn’t like this at all. He wanted a peaceful resolution. It looked like the next few

minutes were going to be anything but peaceful.

“What are you doing?,” asked the Alvas.

“You created us to be heroes and to right wrongs,” said one of the girls.

“That’s what we’re going to do,” said another.

Pike put the tea cup down and backed away. There were a lot of weapons being

brandished now. He didn’t want to be in front of them if they could throw magic bolts

around.

“You can’t be serious,” said the Alvas. “None of you have the ability to fight me.

Don’t wreck everything because of some stranger.”

“We’re done with you,” said one of the girls. “It’s obvious now that you have been

using us from the start. Callie went missing, and we thought she had soloed out. She

didn’t, did she? She turned into a witch. You turned my sister into a witch. And

you’re going to pay for that.”

Callie’s sister flung a handful of pellets at her benefactor. They exploded on impact.

The Alvas was thrown across the room.

Pike backed up to the edge of the room. He frowned. He was going to have to wait

until the action stopped before he could do anything else. He certainly wasn’t going

to run into trouble if he could avoid it.

“So that’s how it’s going to be,” said the Alvas. He picked himself up, shedding

his rags and bandages for a suit of armor that gleamed in the light. He flicked

his hand and a sword appeared in it. “I’m going to show you girls what happens

when you question your betters.”

Callie’s sister began to throw her projectiles so fast her arms became blurs.

Explosions blasted across the room as she looked for a weakness in her armored

target.

The other girls came at the Alvas from both sides. He was forced to use magic spells

and blindingly fast bladework to keep the monster hunters at bay. Scratches and dents

marked where blows were getting through, but he was doing more damage to them

than they were to him.

Pike decided he needed to lend a hand. And he thought that was the dumbest idea he

had come up with all day. He took off his coat and waited for an opening.

He closed on the fight, approaching from behind the Alvas as much as possible.

When he had a clear shot, he threw the coat over the Alvas’s head. He held on, trying

to apply a choke hold Jason had taught him once.

One of the girls with a staff swung it against their benefactor’s legs so he would fall

to his knees. A girl with a hammer whacked against the coat repeatedly until the

Alvas stopped moving. That’s when Pike noted that other girls had seized the villain’s

arms so he couldn’t stab anyone, or point a spell to get free.

Pike pulled his coat away and let his enemy fall to the ground. He frowned at the

golden ichor covering the inside of his apparel. He should have looked for something

else to use as a blinder.

“That could have gone better,” Pike said. He threw the coat on a nearby chair that was

marked but still intact.

He looked around. What he considered to be a small reception hall used as a parlor

had a few small fires burning, a plant bursting out of the ground that several of the

girls still hacked at with swords, wrecked furniture, and sliced walls and floors.

Some of the girls had been wounded. Pike frowned at that. They didn’t seem bothered

at the blood dripping from the cuts and stabs they had taken. One girl had been caught

in a fire strike and didn’t seem to care about the burns across her face and neck.

Pike checked the Alvas to make sure he was dead. The last thing they needed was for

the magician to sit up and start throwing spells again.

“I guess that’s good work,” said Pike. He wiped his hands of ichor with a rag blown

from a table cloth. “Where do we go from here?”

“What happens to us?,” said the apparent leader of the monster hunters. “We’ll still

turn into witches. We can’t avoid that.”

“My partner found someone working on a cure,” said Pike. “I suppose if you don’t

want to be a threat to the city, you could stay here if it doesn’t work.”

“I think you should explain who you are, and how you know everything,” said the

girl.

“Like I said, I work for the city as a finder,” said Pike. “We actually just got started

on this because of a missing person case we handled. Then we ran into these other

magic girls, and found most of the rest of it out as a result. The door I used to get in

here is based on the Marsh Excellence campus, and my partner is waiting on me. He

didn’t know I came in here on my own, so he’s going to be a little irritated.”

“That you put yourself in danger?,” asked another girl.

“No,” said Pike. “Jason loves to kill monsters. It’s his favorite thing in the world,

even more than chasing women and eating good. His day is not great until he chases

something down and cuts its head off. He’s going to be irritated he didn’t get his

chance to get rid of this monster.”

The girls looked at each other. The second girl pointed at the first. The first girl

shrugged and smiled. The second girl quirked her lip in a rueful expression.

“Jason and Pavel Konstantin are outside this dimensional pocket,” said Pike. “I don’t

know if it is safer for you to stay in here, or to change back and go out. Something

about the transformations is what turns you into witches.”

“We’re going to have to stay like this until we heal,” said the first girl. “And we’re

not going to be able to stay here. This place will vanish soon.”

“Follow me,” said Pike. “We’ll go out the door I came through, and talk to Jason

and the others. Maybe they came up with something to help you.”

“You said you started this with a missing person case,” said the second girl. “Did you

find her?”

“She was eaten by a train,” said Pike. “That’s why the Guard asked us to stop all

this.”

“Eaten by a train?,” asked the second girl.

“Don’t worry,” said Pike. “Jason killed it. There’s the garden ahead.”