“Alright, that’s thirty-six bladed weapons, twenty-three blunt weapons, thirteen energy beams and or spells, six toxic gases and or liquids, two live animals, and a very large dildo,” Vell said.
“The dildo counts as a blunt weapon,” Hawke said.
“It does not and this conversation is over,” Vell said. He refused to dedicate more than two consecutive sentences spoken with his own mouth to dildos. “Are we almost there, Alex?”
“It should be in the next room,” Alex said. She pointed to a still-sealed door to the next subterranean room.
“One more opportunity for me to get hit with a dildo,” Kim sighed. Nothing she’d been hit with could damage her physically, but the dildo dealt mental damage. Kim braced herself and popped the door open. For the second time today, a whole lot of nothing got launched their way.
“Huh. No booby traps here,” Kim said.
“Correction,” Alex said, as she stepped forward. “There was a booby trap here.”
She indicated to the corner of the door, where the remnants of a tripwire still remained.
“Somebody already triggered the trap,” Alex said. “Presumably the very same imbecile who caused this incident in the first place.”
“That ‘imbecile’ is over here, you know.”
All heads turned to a dark corner of the room, and found a head staring right back at them.
“Dean?” Kim said. “Or some of you, anyway.”
“Quite so,” said the head of Dean Lichman. There was a large gray pile of ash next to the head, presumably the rest of the Dean.
“You’re the imbecile who caused this?”
“No, Alex,” Dean Lichman said, doing his best to sigh without lungs. He tilted his eyes to the left ever so slightly. “She is. Well, I suppose ‘she’ is more of a pile of ash right now, but- you know what I mean.”
“Would you like me to pick you up?”
“I would appreciate that,” Dean said, as she picked his head up and held it out at the usual height of a head. “Thank you Kim. If it’s not too much trouble I would also appreciate a scratch behind my left ear. That’s been killing me for the past half hour.”
Kim gave him a scratch, and the Dean sighed with relief.
“Thank you.”
“So, uh, Dean, not to question you, or anything,” Vell said. “But you seem remarkably unbothered by the fact a woman was disintegrated right next to you.”
The Dean was usually a caring, sensitive type, intent on caring for and acting in the best interests of those in his care. Even with booby traps hurling axes at people, Vell found Dean Lichman’s apathy towards a death to be the oddest thing happening.
“Well I will rarely say this, but the only thing wrong with that woman getting disintegrated is that she took most of my body with her,” the Dean grunted. “She was here to- well, I suppose you don’t need the whole story, I’ll-”
“No, no, actually please do tell us the whole story,” Vell said.
“Right, well, as you know the school was gifted an unusually large grant last year,” Dean explained. “Which was then rescinded this year.”
Vell nodded. Kraid had donated a large amount of money to the Einstein-Odinson last year, in hopes of funding a student who would turn out to be a looper. After the gambit had failed, he had apparently opted not to repeat it.
“Well, the Board of Directors has apparently taken umbrage with our loss of funding,” Dean Lichman continued. “They sent some pet accountant to appraise our campus and ‘identify cost-cutting measures’.”
“Already off to a bad start.”
“You have no idea,” Dean Lichman said. “I’m not opposed to trimming a bit of fat, buying a few less experimental isotopes, but that woman was intent on stripping us down to the bone! She wanted to close Piero’s Pizza, for god’s sake!”
“Get rid of the only source of pizza on an island of seven-thousand college students?” Hawke scoffed. “Was she trying to start riots?”
“One would think,” Dean Lichman said. “In an effort to distract her from all our school’s worldly pleasures, we switched to the topic of our school challenge days. On that matter, we agreed where cuts could be made. It is expensive to remove all the stairs on the island, or set up elaborate laser grids for you to dodge.”
“Yeah, I’m not too sure many people would miss those,” Kim agreed. While the challenge days were meant to test the ingenuity of students, the vast majority of the student body simply ignored them. On a personal level, the challenges also often caused daily apocalypses, so Kim would not be sad to see them go.
“As I thought. And so as we took stock of various challenge day materials past and present, our resident parasite found remnants of a thankfully-canceled challenge to booby trap every door on campus, inadvertently activated it, and got herself disintegrated trying to escape the consequences of her actions.”
“Ooh, karma, I like it.”
“There is a certain cosmic irony to it,” Dean Lichman agreed. “I just wish she hadn’t taken my body with her.”
“We’ll get her next time,” Kim said.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Kim snapped. “Any chance this nonsense has an off switch?”
“Not that I am aware of, but in theory, anything that can be done can be undone,” Dean Lichman said. “On that note, Mr. Harlan, there is a rune sequence along the back wall I believe you should take a look at. I’d point, but, well…”
Even in the absence of a guiding finger, Vell found his way to the runes on the rear wall. He had to brush a thick layer of dust off the stones, and even when he did so, the tangled lines were hard to parse.
“Damn, this is archaic. Not a single rune above three lines,” Vell said. The more lines a rune had, the more intricate its effects could be, from the single-lined rune for “order” to the ten-lined mystery rune on Vell’s back, which was apparently capable of resurrecting the dead and creating intelligent life. These short, simple runes barely did anything at all, so it required dozens of them working in sequence to create a meaningful effect. “Must be late eighties, not long after runes were invented. Give me a minute, this is a lot to parse.”
Vell traced fingers across the dusty runes and tried to untangle their meanings. Each individual rune was, by definition, very simple, but they were interconnected in dozens of different ways, tangling their purposes into a complicated web. Between that and the outdated processes being used to connect them all, it was a nigh-incomprehensible mess that would take the average person hours to untangle.
“Got it,” Vell said, after two minutes. “Alex, do you know how to do a magical inversion surge?”
“Obviously. It’s child’s play,” Alex said. “I assume performing one on this rune sequence would reverse the trap summoning?”
“Drawing them all back here, right,” Vell said. “In theory, anyway. We know everything we need to know, so I figure we can try it right now. Just to see if it works.”
Alex agreed, and she snapped her fingers. Gray light snapped into the runic sequence on the wall and washed through the connected runes backwards, reversing their magical course. The air started to buzz as magical energy was drawn back into the room. Hawke’s hair stood on end, and he put a hand on his chin.
“Uh, Alex?”
“What?”
“Shouldn’t we have left the room before you summoned all the traps back to it?”
“That actually would’ve been a very good idea,” Alex said, right before several hundred axes, battering rams, and angry eels catapulted back into the room.
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“We’ll call that one a mutual screwup,” Vell said, as he convened the morning meeting. Alex was more than happy to diffuse the blame for once. “So, last resort, we can summon all the traps back to the storage room, but let’s try for prevention rather than a cure. Ideas on how to keep the lady away from the traps in the first place?”
“I could kneecap the finance bitch,” Kim suggested.
“Plan Z. Anyone else?”
“If finances are her concern, we could simply propose a sensible budget plan,” Alex said.
“Possible, but counterpoint,” Kim said. “She works for the Board of Directors. Historically speaking, they’re going to want to take things we aren’t willing to give.”
Two years ago, they had done just that, by trying to take Kim herself. They’d seen her as an asset to be used and exploited as they saw fit, not as a person. That incident had given Kim more than enough reason to hate the Board of Directors and everyone associated with them for the rest of her life -and she was presumably immortal, so that was a lot of hate.
“Presumably they have a mathematical goal they are trying to reach,” Alex said. “If we propose a working plan, they’d have no reason to say no.”
“Okay, well let’s start chopping, then,” Hawke said. “What’s one thing everyone on campus would be okay with us getting rid of?”
“The Marine Biology department?”
“Damn, that’s actually good,” Hawke said. That had been meant as a rhetorical question.
“I would prefer we not banish my girlfriend,” Vell said. Skye was an outlier among the Marine Biologists but still one of them.
“Well if we can’t get rid of them, I don’t think we’ll find anything we can all agree on,” Hawke said. “What about swinging the opposite direction? Instead of getting rid of costs, we add value.”
On paper, the Einstein-Odinson had always operated at a loss -the budget for experiments (and repairs) was well beyond what the college drew in from tuition. The Board considered those losses an investment, as the supergenius students always went on to invent incredibly useful (and profitable) new technology. While that technical deficit had gotten much larger this year, dangling a sufficiently impressive invention in front of the Board might cause them to remember their long-term goals.
“Then we run into an equal but opposite problem,” Kim said. “What do we show them that’ll impress them, but that they won’t try to steal or co-opt for their own dumb schemes?”
“Money this, money that,” Samson said. “What if we just run this lady off the island entirely?”
“Back to kneecapping, I see,” Kim said. She clenched her fists.
“No kneecapping,” Vell said. “Obviously if we could just scare her away, that’d be great, but without involving physical pain or property damage, that’s almost impossible. We'd have to come up with some way to delay her-"
The door to the lair lurched open as their usual latecomer came late.
“Hello all, thank you for starting without me again,” Helena said, as she hobbled through the door. “Not sarcasm, by the way, I hate when people sit around and wait for me to limp my way in twenty minutes later than everyone else.”
"Hi Helena," Vell said, before continuing. "And even then, chasing her off would take something deeply, incredibly unpleasant, something absolutely no one could ever like-”
Helena made it to the table and took a seat right next to Alex. It took her a few seconds to realize everyone was staring at the two of them.
“What?”
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The finance expert arrived via the teleportation circle -the most expensive possible way to reach the island, an irony Dean Lichman silently noted. She had barely stepped through the glowing circle of magic before she started appraising the island with an overtly critical eye, already hawkishly looking for anything that drew her ire.
“Welcome to the Einstein-Odinson College,” Dean Lichman said, as insincerely as he could. “You must be the Board’s representative?”
“Elizah Song, yes,” the rep said. “From the partial decomposition, I’d say you’re Dean Lichman?”
“You are correct, but we do have other undead students and faculty, mind you,” Dean Lichman said. Already off to a bad start.
“Excellent. Shall we begin, then?”
“Actually, there has been a small change of plans,” Dean Lichman said. “I’m overwhelmed with...other school responsibilities, but I will entrust our cost cutting tour to some of my most trusted associates.”
Dean Lichman gestured to the side, and Alex and Helena stepped forward. Mrs. Song raised a sharp eyebrow as the two students approached.
“These two will assist you,” Dean Lichman said. He was trying not to smile too hard. Duplicity did not come naturally to him, and he was trying to fool both sides of the conversation right now.
As far as Alex and Helena knew, they were there to help provide alternative financial measures -Alex would emphasize potential profits, while Helena focused on making small, unobtrusive cuts to the budget. In reality, they were both there to annoy and obstruct the financial representative so thoroughly that she could never complete her objective. Dean Lichman was in on the latter plan, and while he had mixed feelings on weaponizing Alex’s ego, he did want to keep his school’s funding secure.
Elizah took a long look at her two “tour guides”, and her eyes lingered especially long on Helena’s crutches.
“Is this an official position? Are you two being paid for this?”
“Nope, volunteer.”
“Fine, then, let’s get started,” Elizah said.
“Alright then,” Helena said. She waved one of her crutches to gesture to campus, and intentionally swung it close enough to Elizah that she had to step back. “Where would you like to begin?”
“You’re the tour guides, you tell me,” Elizah scoffed. “And hurry, I need to have a full report typed up before the office closes.”
“Then let’s not waste time,” Alex said. “I know exactly where to begin.”
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“Here we are,” Alex said. “The most important department on campus.”
“I assure you it’s entirely coincidental that it happens to be Alex’s department,” Helena said.
The Theoretical Science department, as its name implied, was more vague in its purpose than most other classes, but that lack of purpose did not come with a lack of skill. The department was a home for people like Freddy and Goldie whose intellect spanned multiple disciplines, and often knew more than the faculty could teach. The students were more focused on experimentation than education, and so they produced some of the most impressive (and weirdest) technology on campus.
“It is coincidental,” Alex said. “I’m a recent arrival, none of my projects have advanced enough to have tangible results. My seniors have more to show.”
Alex led the way across the lab to one senior in particular.
“Freddy.”
“Ah!”
Freddy had been in the middle of organizing his desk when Alex approached, a process that immediately got reversed as he dropped papers everywhere, snatched a random tablet off his desk, and spun around. He held the tablet between himself and Alex as if it were a shield.
“H-hi, Alex,” Freddy stammered. “You’re here. Why are you- what’s up?”
Alex did a quick recap of the school’s financial situation and introduced Freddy to Elizah. Freddy’s already fraught nerves got even more frayed when he realized Helena was involved, and they had some kind of auditor in tow to boot.
“I imagine you can make a demonstration of something you are working on to impress our guest,” Alex said.
“Please do,” Elizah said. “It’s been some time since this department produced a breakthrough worthy of its budget.”
Had Freddy been a braver man, he might have glared angrily at Alex. All she’d managed to accomplish was invite even more unwanted scrutiny. Since he was not a braver man, Freddy settled for a noncommittal shrug and some awkward mumbling.
“We haven’t really had a lot of time to start our big projects,” Freddy muttered.
“That seems to be a common refrain,” Elizah said. “How long do you need to get things started?”
“We’re working with things particle accelerators and hypermagic power cells, ma’am,” Freddy said. “These things have certain safety standards that need to be applied.”
“On that note,” Elizah said. “Your equipment is beginning to glow.”
Freddy did a quick double-take over his shoulder. A set of metal rods near his workbench were starting to glow bright red.
“Oh, no, that’s fine, that’s, uh, normal,” Freddy said. “Just venting heat, totally normal.”
“Entirely exposed like that?”
“It’s for observational purposes,” Freddy mumbled. Though his acting skills were less than stellar, Elizah didn’t seem to be focusing on Freddy enough to see through the act. She made a few notes on her tablet and prepared to move on, until the door behind them opened.
“Got the hamburger,” Goldie said, as she wandered into the lab. “How’s the grill, Freddy?”
Elizah raised an eyebrow into an almost daggerlike point.
“Grill?”
Freddy silently grit his teeth while Goldie approached, ground meat in hand.
“Yeah, you want a burger?”
“I’ll pass,” Elizah said coldly. Goldie was too focused on her lunch to notice the steely attitudes all around her.
“Helena? Can you eat red meat?”
“No, a hamburger would kill me,” Helena said. “But thank you for asking.”
A pointed and notable silence followed in which Goldie deliberately did not ask Alex if she wanted a burger. She would’ve said no anyway, but Alex filed away the slight into a growing list of grievances against Goldie.
“You said this was a heat sink,” Elizah snapped.
“And it is,” Freddy stammered. “It’s just a heat sink we’ve turned to, uh, alternative applications.”
“Harnessing heat that would’ve otherwise been radiated out into the air and wasted,” Alex added. “It’s energy efficiency in action.”
Elizah paused her note-taking long enough to sigh.
“I suppose that’s mostly true,” Elizah admitted. “What is all this power coming from, anyway?”
Goldie and Freddy exchanged a nervous glance.
“Reactor.”
“What powers the reactor?”
“Uh, alternative energy sources,” Freddy said. Elizah tapped one of her long, talon-like fingernails into her tablet.
“Tell me exactly what powers this reactor,” she demanded. Freddy was the first one to buckle under the pressure.
“A dead demon.”
“A dead demon?”
“It was dead when we got it,” Goldie protested.
“Where did you get a dead demon?”
Goldie crossed her arms and looked over Elizah from head to toe.
“What are you, a cop?”
“I’m a financial resource officer,” Elizah said. “And I need to know if you’ve been misappropriating school resources to purchase illicit demon corpses.”
“We didn’t buy it,” Freddy said. “It’s a long story, but the demon showed up, it got killed, and we needed a safe way to store the corpse. If we don’t keep that thing contained while it decomposes it’s going to be leaking harmful corrupted mana all over the island.”
“And in the meantime you’re using it to make hamburgers?”
“It powers the lab,” Freddy said. “And, yeah, we make hamburgers. But like Alex said, all that heat would still be there, might as well use it.”
Elizah tapped her fingernails a few more times, and appeared to contemplate writing down a few more notes. With one final resigned sigh, she gave up on her tablet and rolled her eyes.
“I suppose this all evens out, somehow,” Elizah said. “Your decaying demon corpse is lowering the energy bill, at least.”
“Let’s move on,” Alex said. Elizah agreed. Goldie and Freddy waited until she was a few minutes out before putting the burgers on the grill.