Kyle, Betty, and Jenny chased the living puddle down the hall.

“I have concocted a stratagem,” Betty said. “Last night, it acted like an ordinary house cat around my parents. It seems to be keeping its true nature a secret, at least from them. Possibly if we guided it to a place with more people, it would revert to a normal animal and be easier to capture.”

Unfortunately, that was easier said than done. The halls of the school were almost empty, it being the end of the day after a big event. Teachers and students alike have a tendency to ignore their classes under situations like that.

“The lockers,” Kyle said firmly. “There has to be someone hanging around there. Even if it's just Danny and his goons.”

“Understood,” Betty nodded. “But we have no way of influencing his movement.”

“I might!” Jenny said, extending a hand. Her illusion of a dusky human skin tone faded away to pinkish purple, and pink light flickered around her fingers. Sparks traced from her fingers to the figure of the fleeing puddle, glistening as they sparkled through the fluid. At the next junction, it turned left.

“Fascinating,” Betty said, staring at Jenny as her human illusion reasserted itself. “I assume this has something more to do with the supernatural nature of recent events. What exactly did you do?”

“I sent it an illusion!” Jenny beamed. “It sees a really wriggly fish swimming that way.”

Around the corner there was a splash and a scream. The three of them rounded the corner to find...

Cindi Walker.

That was a surprise. Kyle hadn't thought about Cindi Walker in months. In grade school he'd had a crush on her, just like everyone else in school starting to get an interest in girls. She was a bubble, cheerful redhead. Over the years thought, two things had become painfully obvious.

One, Cindi Walker was terminally stupid.

Two, Cindi Walker was also a bitch of colossal proportions.

Now, even though the years had given Cindi the kind of figure people got yelled at for describing in books because it stretched suspension of disbelief, it was mostly new people who got attracted to Cindi. Danny had dated her a few times, that was about all anyone local needed to know. Things like that had a tendency to dull romantic thoughts.

Now, though, she was wearing her cheerleading uniform and absolutely soaked with water. The thoughts which came to Kyle's mind weren't romantic, exactly, but they were in the same neighborhood. The seedy side of it.

Kyle shook his head. This was not the time for that kind of thing.

“Oh, my god,” Britanny said, looking down at her soaked uniform, then glaring at the three of them. “Did you three do this?”

“How?” Kyle asked. “What do we have to carry water in?”

“You could have hidden a bucket or something around the corner,” she said. “What, did you want a peep show? Well take a good look, because once I tell Danny and he gets his hands on you...”

Kyle had some lingering instinctive fear of Danny, but intellectually he knew there probably wasn't much Danny could do to him right now. Not after he'd punched Danny down the hall. But as Cindi's angry rant went on, Kyle's eyes were drawn to something else.

A pair of ears, rising from the water soaked into her top.

She's not just soaked with water, Kyle's brain finally caught up. She's soaked with THE CAT.

A tail sprouted from Cindi's dampened hair. And then all hell broke loose.

Her uniform top began moving like a thing alive, squirming all over her body, twisting and tightening and tugging in every direction. Cindi screamed in surprise and frustration.

“Ahhh! Ahh! What the hell!?” She demanded. “How are you doing this?”

All three of them held their hands up to show they couldn't possibly have anything to do with it. With a final violent jerk like the snapping of a flag in the wind, the liquid cat exploded from Cindi's top, throwing her into the lockers as it disappeared down the hall.

“We should go,” Betty said.

“Sorry!” Jenny said as they ran past her. “Not that we had anything to do with what happened!”

“Come back here!” Cindi shouted from her place on the floor.

“I do not intend to do that!” Betty called back.

They followed the cat through the hallways again, and this time, and as they ran Kyle started to get a sense of where it was going.

“The pool,” Kyle said. “It's heading for the pool.”

“I do not believe there is anyone in there right now,” Betty told him.

“Well I guess we'll find out,” Kyle said. They reached the door to the pool room and opened the door carefully, stepping inside to find...nothing.

The room was indeed empty, the waters of the pool quiet and still.

“Were we wrong?” Jenny asked, looking around. “I thought we saw it come in here.”

“I believe so as well,” Betty said. “It may have transformed again. We should be careful.”

They walked around the pool, looking carefully in every shadow for the cat. Their footsteps echoed oddly in the wide open space.

“This is still so strange to me,” she said. “I saw them on TV, but the last time I was out having a big pool of water like this...well, a school couldn't have one. This was for palaces. Of course at the time only people who lived in palaces really attended school. At least anything as complete as this. But now you say lots of people have them for just their houses.”

“Benefits of the modern world I guess,” Kyle shrugged. “I mean I've never had a pool, so I can't really talk about it.”

“The last time you were out,” Betty said. “Have you been freed from some kind of confinement? And after a great deal of time. I assume you aren't human, or at least not an ordinary human.”

“Oh! I'm a genie,” Jenny said.

“I see,” Betty said. “That would make sense.”

“Kyle freed me from the lamp! And now a whole bunch of stuff has been happening.”

“I can only imagine,” Betty said, the light catching her glasses as she slid them up her nose. “But I would very much like specifics. What, exactly, did he wish for?”

“Betty,” Kyle said. “It doesn't work like that.”

“I can only imagine the wishes born from the mind of a young man just past his eighteenth birthday, when a woman so prodigiously endowed fell into his lap, bound to serve him...”

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“It's not like that!” Kyle said. “Stop it!”

“Mrrrooowwww,” the cat said, and they all whirled around trying to find the source of the noise. There was a wet, burbling quality to the sound, as if it was coming from...

“Underwater!” Kyle said.

“Do you think it's in the pool?” Jenny asked, staring into the water.

The water stared back.

A cat's eye the size of Jenny's entire torso opened up on the surface of the water. Jenny yelped and stumbled back, and the water in the pool began to rise up, forming the head and front paws of a cat rising out of the pool. The tips of the ears scraped against the high ceiling of the room, and the arms the cat waved in their direction were all longer than its body.

“This is an unfortunate development,” Betty said.

“Yeah,” Kyle said, staring up at the monstrous cat. “This is getting out of hand.”

“It could really hurt someone like this,” Jenny said worriedly.

“I know.” Kyle pulled down into himself, for the well of power he'd used against the efreet the other day. He was a little afraid, terrified really, of firing another lightning blast like the one he'd used to fight off the monster. It would probably demolish the building, let alone the fact that it could damage his other friends. But maybe if he could call on a little of that power...

The cat focused on him and hissed.

Can it tell what I'm trying to do?

“Mrooowww!” the cat yowled, swinging a paw at Kyle larger than he was. Kyle bolted out of the way, moving faster than he was read for but catching himself before he did more than crack the tiles around the pool. The cat's enormous paw crashed into the ground and exploded into water, splashing all over the three of them as it slid back into the pool. Above them, the water reformed into the shape of the cat's paw.

“Alright nothing else I can do,” Kyle said, lightning crackling at the corner of his eyes. “I'm going for it!”

“Don't do that!” Tanya said, bursting through the door with Evan in tow. “You have no idea what you're doing, you'll take down the whole building!”

“Well what am I supposed to do?” Kyle said.

The giant water cat was reaching back for another swing. As it's paw came down Tanya stepped in front, raising her hands. A cold wind blew from around her, and a soft beam of pale blue light washed form her hand into the creature. The water froze the instant the beam touched it, freezing the whole head and shoulders solid. They bobbed in the water like an iceberg. There was a meowl of protest, and a puddle of waters with ears and a tail burst from the water and hurried away down the hall.

“Oh,” Kyle said. “I don't know how to do that yet.”

“I know you don't!” Tanya snapped.

“Thanks Tanya!” Jenny said. “You saved us!”

“That was my mistake!” Tanya glared. “How are you two so much trouble already! And you!” She pointed at Betty. “What are you doing summoning things you don't know how to control!”

“Summon?” Betty blinked. “I summoned nothing. It appeared in my room last night. I am only just being initiated into the supernatural nature of events.”

“Right,” Tanya sighed. “Right. Okay. Yes, you did summon it. But you didn't actually complete the ritual. So it's here, and it won't go too far from you, but you can't control it either. That is the absolute worst way this could be happening. Why wouldn't it be?”

Kyle looked over and caught Eric's eye.

“You too?” He asked.

“Yep!” Eric said. “I'm even smarter now than I was before!”

“That's not actually what mental enhancement does,” Tanya cut in, but Eric ignored her.

“Ladies,” he said. “Looking good!”

For the first time, Kyle noticed that Betty and Jenny were completely soaked. Neither of them reacted to Evan's comment. Kyle found himself missing Ammeline, she probably would have slapped him.

“One problem at a time,” Tanya said, rubbing her temples. “That creature is called a five elements cat. The rest of you need to go make sure it doesn't hurt anyone else until we have it under control.”

“What are you going to do?” Jenny asked.

“Betty and I are going to perform a proper familiar bonding ritual,” Tanya said. “Once that's done, she should have control over the Five Elements Cat.”

“So that's what this creature is called,” Betty said thoughtfully. “I see. So I summoned it inadvertently somehow last night.”

“We can sort all that out later,” Tanya said. “For right now, I want to know why the rest of you idiots are still standing here.”

“We don't know how to find it,” Kyle said. “There's no sign of it down the hall.”

“What was it before it was water?” Tanya said. “Was it fire, or metal?”

“It was metal!” Jenny said. “How did you know that?”

“The interactions of the five elements is required reading for a sorceress,” Tanya waved a hand dismissively. “It's going down the creation cycle. Water creates wood. It'll turn into wood next, and it'll be heading for someplace where there's either a lot of natural wood growth, or a lot of purely wooden construction.”

“The old gazebo out back,” Evan said. “It's got both. The gazebo is wood, and it's in the middle of a patch of trees.”

Kyle nodded, leading Jenny and Evan away after the cat. Tanya dragged Betty over to a dry corner and pulled a piece of chalk that glittered like gold out of her bag.

“Now let me show you how to do this,” Tanya said. “Either you'll succeed or you'll fail, but either way the cat will be out of our hair.”

“What will happen if I fail?” Betty asked.

“The mystical backlash will throw the cat back to its home dimension and burn you to a crisp.”

“Oh.”

Kyle, Evan, and Jenny found themselves standing next to the old gazebo a few minutes later. There was, once again, no sign of the cat.

“Maybe Evan was wrong,” Jenny said.

“Impossible!” Evan told her haughtily. “I've got a super brain now!”

“No wait,” Kyle said. “We fell for this before. It's probably merged with one of the trees or...something...”

Before Kyle had even finished speaking, from the roof of the old wooden gazebo, a pair of pointed ears carved from wood had sprouted. The gazebo rotated on its base, and he saw that under the ears a pair of slit pupiled eyes had grown. They glared down at him.

“Mroowwowowoowww!” The Gazebo meowed in his direction, and the trees around it began to writhe like tentacles.

“Oh boy.”

Tanya and Betty knelt on either side of a circle drawn in golden chalk, odd symbols around the sides almost like some kind of unearthly clock. Betty had her eyes closed, and her hands over the circle.

“So can you feel it?” Tanya said. “An active source of power inside of you?”

“I do feel something strange,” Betty said. “When I focus.”

“Good,” Tanya said. “That's the node you used to summon the five elements cat. Now I need you to focus on that, and repeat the chant. That should help your energy and the cat's energy combine.”

“And if I say it wrong...”

“Don't worry about that.”

“You strongly implied I would die.”

“If you don't do it soon, I'll kill you.”

“I suppose that's fair enough.”

Kyle always knew he would have to face the gazebo alone.

Maybe not entirely alone. Evan was surprisingly useful with his newfound brain powers, whatever they were. He kept calling out where the gazebo-cat was going to strike next, giving Kyle a chance to dodge. Jenny was helping too, confusing it with illusions to give Kyle more time to react.

But when it came to getting hit with trees, it was all down to Kyle.

For what it was worth the trees didn't hurt that much. His reinforced body must be able to take a lot of punishment. But it still hurt, and neither Jenny nor Evan could take the hits. So he was out there, getting hit by...well, not really trees. The trees themselves didn't move much. But they sprouted new branches that whipped and lashed like tentacles, and those were what he was getting hit with.

“MRRROOWWWWW!” The catzebo hissed furiously, all its tentacles retracting.

“Evan!” Kyle called back. “Now what's it going to do?”

“I don't know!” Evan said. “I can only figure things out based on what I already know...”

The ground erupted around them and they found themselves wrapped up in roots.

“Okay,” Evan said. “I should have seen this one coming...hkkk!”

The root-tentacles started to close tightly around all three of them, cutting off Evan and Jenny's air. Kyle, in the meantime, was just furious. With a grunt of effort he tore free of the root holding him and raced over to Jenny, ripping the wood apart and dropping her into his arms.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said breathlessly, looking up at him. “That was really cool.”

“Thanks,” he smiled back.

“But you should probably go save Evan.”

“Oh right!” Kyle turned and ran towards Evan, but he needn't have bothered.

The roots were already disappearing back into the ground. Turning to the gazebo, Kyle saw the cat face had disappeared completely.

The five elements cat sat in the golden circle, licking it's paws. Betty leaned back on her elbows, panting with effort and covered in sweat.

“Congratulations,” Tanya said. “You have officially bound your first familiar. A Five Elements Cat, no less.”

“Yes,” Betty leaned forwards, peering at the cat. “I take it this creature is unusual even among other magical beasts?”

“It's one of the most sought after familiars you can get,” Tanya said.

Now that it wasn't transforming into anything, it looked like a sleek, streamlined cat with silvery fur and black stripes, its ears paws and tail tipped black. It leaned in and licked Betty affectionately on the nose.

“Oh good,” Kyle said, walking up to them. “Because when it stopped attacking us I was afraid we'd lost control of it again.”

He knelt down next to the cat, still sitting in the ritual circle, and put out a hand so it could sniff his fingers.

“You're actually kind of cute when you're not going all crazy,” Kyle said. “Peace?”

The cat stared up at him, then nuzzled his fingers with its furry cheek before hopping into Betty's laugh.

“That is unusually high praise from a cat,” Betty commented.

“The ritual was a success,” Tanya said. “But all of you are going to have to learn how to handle your nodes.”

“Oh I just bet you know how to...”

“Speak again and I'll kill you,” Tanya cut Evan off.

“I'll do some speaking,” Kyle said, turning to Betty and Evan. “I owe you guys an explanation, huh?”

“Yes,” Evan said, glaring at him.

“That would be helpful,” Betty said, cradling the cat in her arms.

“All of you should come to my house tomorrow afternoon,” Tanya said. “I'll leave the explaining to you, Kyle.”

Tanya walked away, leaving Kyle alone with his friends.

“Right so...” he shook his head. “Look, come over to my place. I'll do my best to explain what's going on. Looks like you're all caught up in this mess too.”