“That was about as far as Vell got before they snatched him,” Samson explained. After regrouping with the other loopers and their available allies, he had recapped the situation to the best of his ability.

“Damn. I don’t know shit about magic,” Harley said.

“Me neither,” Luke said. “Lee usually handles all our magic stuff.”

“Well let’s go get her out of her room, then,” Samson said.

“It’s probably not going to be that easy,” Harley said. “She’s not really chill with nudity.”

“I’m not chill with it either, but I’ve been walking around with my dong dangling for three hours now,” Samson said. “She can go tits out for ten minutes.”

“I’ll ask again, but we should probably have a backup plan,” Harley said. “I think Goldie is more magic focused than most of Freddy’s bros. See if you can find her while I talk to Lee.”

The trio of dudes agreed, and the team parted ways again.

As she crossed the quad, Harley wondered how she might convince Lee to get over her bashfulness. The already difficult prospect was made even harder by the constant chanting from different parts of the campus. The nudist cults were getting louder by the minute. Harley ducked through a building just to make sure she stayed out of sight of any potential human-sacrifice hungry cultists. Evading cultists occupied her thoughts right up until she was at Lee’s door. Even though she hadn’t come up with a plan, Harley knocked on the door anyway.

“Lee?”

“If the next words out of your mouth aren’t ‘you can put your clothes back on now’, I don’t want to hear them,” Lee shouted back.

“Well, no, but-”

“Then please go away.”

“Lee, I genuinely don’t want to bug you about this, but the bad guys are using magic and we’re kind of stumped,” Harley said. “We don’t know a lot of witches!”

They had a few other touchstones in Skye’s hydrokinesis and Goldie’s techno-magical research, but even those were threadbare. Thanks to Lee’s general expertise, they’d never needed any other magical know-how.

“I am not leaving!”

“I get it, I get it,” Harley said. “What if I get all the other loopers to clear out first? That way anyone who sees you naked won’t even remember it. It’ll be like it never happened!”

“I’ll remember it.”

“Sure, fine,” Harley said. “Work with me here, Lee, what’s got to happen to get you out of this room.”

“Me being able to put my clothes back on,” Lee shouted. “And nothing else!”

“Well, that’s probably not going to happen unless you leave the room, so you can see our dilemma.”

“Just wait for the next loop,” Lee said. “We know who we need to stop and when we need to stop them. I’ll do it then.”

“We could, yeah, but they got Kim and Vell and Himiko all tied up now,” Harley said. “I don’t want to leave them dangling out there.”

The news that her friends were in distress gave Lee pause, but only for a moment.

“They’ve been through worse.”

“Okay, I get it,” Harley said. “I’ll leave you alone.”

“Please do.”

Harley knew a dead end when she saw one. If helping her friends couldn’t get Lee moving, nothing would. It was time to start looking for plan B.

Meanwhile, inside Lee’s dorm, she had burned past plan B, all the way to plan Z, and was now trying out plan gamma. The last thing she wanted was to stay cooped up in her dorm while there were problems to be solved, and especially while her friends were in danger, but the idea of going streaking across campus was so mortifying that her legs stopped working every time she approached the door. She had her entire collection of textbooks and arcane tomes spread out across the room, and she was scouring them for potential answers. So far, none had presented themselves.

She had tried to dispel whatever magic was enforcing nudity, and failed due to a lack of information on the spell. Information she could easily acquire if she went and saw the ritual for herself, but that, again, required leaving the dorm. She’d then tried altering the spells, making some kind of magic garment, and making herself invisible, but these nudists freaks were apparently very thorough in covering loopholes. Any attempt to hide her naked body ended in failure.

Lee abandoned her research station to move on to another key part of her academic process: moping. She went to her bedroom and threw herself down on top of the sheets in a huff. She hated feeling crippled by such a foolish circumstance. Part of her wanted to just sprint out the door and run naked across the quad, just to get it over with. That part of her usually lasted about half a second before every other part crushed it to death with a general sense of modesty and shame.

As her sense of modesty won out again, Lee stared up at the ceiling and scowled. She got up and walked across the room to turn out the lights. She wanted to be able to stare up and mope properly, without a bright lightbulb dominating her version.

While thinking of a lightbulb, a lightbulb went off.

----------------------------------------

“It’s a no go on Lee, guys,” Harley said, as she approached the group. “I see you got Goldie, though.”

“Yeah, I’m- oh wow,” Goldie mumbled.

“Yeah yeah, you’ve got nice tits too, focus,” Harley said. Her tolerance for sapphism had taken a deep dive over the past few hours. “How’s Freddy?”

“He saw a vagina and immediately fainted,” Goldie said. Harley sighed.

“Sounds like him,” Harley said. “How about you, you got something workable for us?”

“Maybe?”

Goldie gestured to an odd-looking device on a table, which appeared to be some kind of gun cobbled together from spare parts and a few runes. Harley really wished Vell was around to double-check those runes, because they didn’t look quite as neatly organized as his rune-tech devices usually did.

“This should, in theory, dispel any concentration of magical energy,” Goldie said.

“In theory?”

“I’ve only tested it on very small magical effects,” Goldie said. “This spell is, presumably, very big. I guarantee nothing.”

“Any chance you have a plan B?”

“No.”

“Cool. So we bullrush the problem and hope for the best?”

“You know,” Luke began. “There are other magic experts on campus. Maybe we can try recruiting more help?”

“Most of the other students are currently dancing around bonfires and chanting right now.”

In the distance, someone shouted “Kali-Ma”, and someone else screamed.

“And now they appear to be ripping out hearts,” Harley said. “Recruitment is not really on the table right now, unfortunately.”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“I’m not really into ‘all or nothing’ plans,” Luke said.

“Well then you hang out with the wrong people, motherfucker,” Harley said. She briefly considered picking up the gun for dramatic effect, then remembered she didn’t know how to use it. “Goldie, grab your thingy. We’re going in together, you blast anything that looks magical.”

“It doesn’t blast, it generates a diffuse wave effect that-”

“Goldie. Blast,” Harley repeated. Goldie nodded in understanding. Now was not the time for specific and accurate scientific terminology. Now was the time to blast.

Harley took the lead, with Luke, Hawke, Samson, and Goldie trailing behind. They were low on numbers, but they had the power of science bullshit on their hands. It had saved Harley’s ass on more than one occasion, and though that ass was now bare, she felt the same principles applied.

The team made their way through the magic labs, and came to a stop just outside where Samson said the lair was. Harley checked on her team, gave a thumbs up, and then pointed around the corner.

“On three. One, two, three-”

On the count of three, Harley grabbed the nearest heavy object (a chair) and hefted it in the air before sprinting around the corner. She managed to crack her improvised weapon over the head of one of the nudist weirdos before another one swung around and blasted some magic in her direction. Harley dodged, once, then twice, but failed to dodge the third bolt. A band of power wrapped around her waist and held her in place. Harley struggled, but not that hard. She knew it was pointless in more ways than one.

Hot on Harley’s heels, Goldie rounded the corner, aimed her makeshift magic gun at the center of the ritual circle, and blasted it. Or diffuse wave-generated it, depending on preferred terminology. Whichever terminology was intended to apply, it soon became clear that a third word would be more accurate: useless. Goldie clicked the trigger once, then twice, to no effect.

“Shit.”

That was all Goldie could do to lament her failed invention before she got snatched up in magic too. Her device clattered to the ground and broke as she was hoisted into the air along with her friends. The tattooed leader of the group grunted with anger and regarded his new captives.

“Why are you people so intent on stopping us?”

“Because you’re a weird pervert and you’re killing people,” Harley snapped.

“I am not a weird pervert,” the weird pervert said. “And how am I killing people? Who would possibly die just from losing their clothes?”

“Scuba divers,” Harley said.

“Mountain climbers,” Goldie added.

“Literally everyone in cold climates,” Luke added.

A few of the nudist weirdos were starting to look uncomfortable, especially their boss.

“Seriously? You concocted this whole huge magical ritual and didn’t stop to think that some people live in cold places?”

A sound argument, to which the only rebuttal was a muting band of magic across the mouth. Luke mumbled a few more choice words anyway, just to let the nudists know he was getting the last word.

“Honestly, you people confuse me,” the nudist leader said. “You have no problem running around naked, you understand the importance of breaking down the barriers of human connection.”

Even though her words came out as nothing more than muffled nonsense, Harley still launched into a tirade about the importance of consent and bodily autonomy. It may not have been important to the nudists, but it was important to her. The muffled ranting was barely audible, and the nudists largely ignored it. What they did not ignore was a sudden change in lighting.

“Should it be this bright outside?”

“It’s the sun, idiot.”

“Is the sun supposed to be getting closer?”

“What?”

The nudist leader looked out the window, and then immediately looked away. The bright light nearly burned his retinas just with a casual glance. He shielded his vision and looked away for a few seconds, then dared to glance out the window again. The bright light was seemingly already gone.

“Well that was weird,” the leader said. “I’m glad it’s gone, though.”

He turned around to face the door and immediately got another face full of blinding light. He let out a loud scream of distress that was almost immediately matched with a bolt of magic to the face.

“That is for making me run around naked!”

Harley made a muffled hum of noise that should have been the word “Lee?”. Though blinding light obscured her (and everything else, for that matter), the voice was immediately recognizable as the one and only Lee.

“Hello dear,” Lee said. “I have solved the problem! No one can see me naked if no one can see anything!”

It took a few magical charms for Lee herself to be able to see through her own blinding magical light, but once that had been dealt with, the workaround was foolproof. It was also very effective at blinding all her would-be enemies. The nudists couldn’t even look at Lee, much less attack her. With a few well-aimed magic bolts, Lee took down all the nudists in a matter of seconds.

“Pathetic.”

Lee did a quick scan of the room, and bashfully diverted her eyes from all of her naked teammates and friends. She turned her back to them and focused on her next move.

“Give me a moment,” Lee said. “A global dispel is a bit much, even for me.”

Himiko started grunting something. Lee couldn’t understand the words, but she could easily guess the meaning.

“Oh, right, yes, I’ll get you down first.”

A localized disruption was much easier, and with a wave of her hands, the magic bindings restraining her friends vanished. They dropped to the floor at once, all of them managing to land on their feet. Himiko hadn’t even hit the ground before her her metal hand reached behind her back and started scratching.

“Oh thank god,” she sighed. “My ass has been itching for the past hour.”

“Gross, lady.”

“Oh, drop it, Sammy,” Himiko said. “You’ve only been up there for like three minutes.”

“If you could scratch your ass in silence, please, I’m trying to concentrate,” Lee said. Himiko immediately shut up, though the faint sound of an ass being furiously scratched was still present. “It’ll be just a moment. One, two, three…”

Lee snapped her fingers again. The elaborate lines of the ritual circle sparked and faded out one by one, collapsing in on themselves from the outside in, until the very core of the circle swirled with violet energy and then faded out. Lee waited for a moment for the last sparks of magic to die out, and then gave a satisfied hum and put her hands on her hips as her work completed.

“There we are,” Lee said. She turned around to face her friends, and saw that they all had their eyes covered. “All our clothes are still gone, but we should be able to wrap towels around ourselves, at least. Maybe a blanket toga.”

Harley kept her eyes firmly covered and nodded.

“Oh right, I’ll get my light show out of your way so you can actually see,” Lee said.

“Uh, Lee,” Harley mumbled. “Full disclosure. Your dispel was…”

When even Harley was taking a dramatic pause, the matter was truly dire.

“Very effective.”

After a moment of consideration, Lee looked down at herself, then back up at her friends. She snapped her fingers. The magic was gone.

Lee’s scream lingered in their ears long after Lee herself had fled.

----------------------------------------

“Security!”

Dean Lichman called, and a legion of security drones answered. The ten nudists were surrounded by a swarm of robots in an instant.

“Please escort these weird perverts off the island,” the Dean commanded.

“We are not-”

One of the robots hovered a little bit closer to the nudist leader’s face, and he shut up. Dean Lichman kept a close eye on the island’s intruders until they had been escorted to the docks and on the nearest ship back to the mainland.

“Thank you very much for the warning, Lee,” Dean said, to the only other spectator at the intruder’s exit. Lee nodded sheepishly. “I can’t believe those people. Misappropriating school resources for something so indecent.

“Mm.”

“Is everything alright, Lee?”

“Just fine, Dean, thanks, I’m fine, goodbye.”

Lee stormed away, holding her cardigan closed tight around her chest as she did so. She had on her cardigan, a blouse, an undershirt, and a skirt layered over long leggings, and she still couldn’t shake the feeling of being naked. Especially not being naked in front of all her friends.

Friends she could not avoid forever. She’d gone right back to cooping herself up in her dorm on the previous loop, but now it was a new day (sort of). She could not hide forever. No matter how much she wanted to. Reluctantly, Lee returned to the dining hall, where the other loopers were waiting, and sat down in complete silence.

“So.”

Lee stared down at the table and nodded.

“If it’s any consolation, we pretty much just caught a quick glimpse of your butt,” Harley said.

Lee shook her head. That didn’t help at all.

“I already deleted the memory video off my hard drive,” Kim offered. “But you can go through manually and double check if you want.”

She offered a small tablet connected to her hard drive, which Lee refused.

“I talked to Cane about that memory wiping thing they have,” Vell said. “It apparently needs some testing before it’s safe to use on humans...or anything, for that matter, but I figure a few good loops and we can have it figured out well enough to make all us organic people forget it too.”

“Ugh, stop it,” Lee groaned. “I’m just being ridiculous.”

“It’s not ridiculous,” Harley said. “You should be in control of who sees you and how.”

“I saw all of your dangling...bits,” Lee said. “None of you are here begging me to wipe my brain.”

“We all made our choices,” Vell said. He could’ve easily stayed in his dorm room if he’d wanted to.

“And I’m making my choice now,” Lee said. “You all get to remember my butt. Cherish that memory, it’s the only glimpse you’ll ever get.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself there, Lee, we still got a couple weeks to go,” Harley said. “There is a non-zero chance there are more asses in our future.”

Samson took this chance to excuse himself. He could only handle so much butt-related conversation in a single day. Hawke, Kim, and Vell, having also had their fill of butts and every other related body part, figured now was the time to let the topic die and let Lee get back into her comfort zone. As the group parted ways, Harley decided she had one more butt-related thing to say.

“Oh, and Lee, at the risk of making this much worse-”

“Why stop now?”

Harley turned around and gave two thumbs up.

“Nice ass.”

Lee rolled her eyes as Harley wandered away. She tugged at the neckline of her blouse nervously, and finally noticed just how restrictive wearing so many layers was. With a quick shrug of her shoulders, Lee removed her cardigan, shoved it into her purse, and headed to class.