Chương 34: Chapter 24.1: Moneybreakers

Another set of calculations failed to produce the intended result, so Lee threw away the whole sheet of paper. Mathematics had never been her strong suit, so she didn't have much to gain by working backwards. She'd had to bother Harley for help with the equations in the first place, and she didn't want to bug her friend twice in the same day. It was only her mana-manipulation course work, and Lee didn't particularly care for it in the first place. She set the papers aside to work on hydromancy instead.

Lee turned on the sink just long enough to gather some water to work with, saving it from flowing down the drain with a wave of her fingers. The magically-shaped bubble of water flowed along with the motions of Lee's right hand, dancing at her beck and call to form a perfect, glassy sphere. She moved the orb through the air back to her worktable and set it down, lettiing the orb sit for a moment, retaining it's perfection, before flicking her wrist to shift it into a new shape.

It started as a snowflake, idly spinning in the air like a dangling christmas ornament, before shifting into a model of the College clocktower. After that, Lee escalated her efforts, changing the water into a sculpt of Harley's face, then Vell's, then her own, then Harley again. She let the watery sculpture of Harley linger for a bit as she contemplated what to do next. While she waited, the universe conspired to distract Lee.

Her phone buzzed, and Lee froze the Harley water sculpture in place for a moment while she checked it. She was surprised to find a private chat message from Joan. redeyes02: Lee! Do u wana spend some of ur dad's money on a good cause? Lee: Always. redeyes02: Great! The cause is 'Joan wants pizza' and u can contribute by buying Joan (me) a pizza Additional benefit: Joan (me) will even share the pizza with you Lee: How generous of Joan (You). redeyes02: I know rite.

Anyway no pressur or anything just thought it would b fun Pizza is fun You is fun Pizza+You=More Fun Does my math check out? Lee: The theory is sound I'll meet you in the lunchroom redeyes02: how bout my dorm instead? That way if we wanna talk trash about yr dad no one will overhear us Lee: A good plan. Why not my room, though? It's slightly closer to the lunchroom. You won't have to walk so far. redeyes02: fine by me I'll go grab the pizza and be there soon! Lee breathed a sigh of relief.

The only two things she knew about Joan's dorm room was that she'd previously stored a borderline psychopathic conspiracy board there, and also that she and Vell had sex there on a frequent basis. Neither thought made her very comfortable spending time in Joan's room. To kill time while waiting for Joan to show up, Lee straightened up her dorm. This killed barely any time at all, since her dorm was always clean. Lee kicked her feet for a moment before jumping to the sound of a knock on the door.

She opened the way for Joan and a pizza box which barely fit through the door.

"That is quite sizable," Lee noted.

"Yeah, I was going to get something more reasonable, but then I remembered it's your dad's money we're spending, so I asked for the biggest pizza they had," Joan said. She looked down at the box, which was nearly half the size of her own body.

"I admittedly was not expecting it to be this big."

"This is a college after all, students love pizza," Lee said.

"The table's right over there." Joan craned her neck to look across the dorm and then stared at Lee.

"You want to move the melting ice head first?" Without even turning to look, Lee waved her arm and the half-melted Harley sculpture sailed through the air and slammed right back into the sink.

"Taken care of," Lee said with a forced smile. Joan decided not to question that and instead focused on the matter at hand: pizza. She put the massive box down on the table and eagerly cracked it open to grab a slice nearly the size of her head. Lee managed a single slice before she had to break and let her appetite recharge, but Joan wolfed down two before she even stopped to talk.

"So, Lee, what was up with the weird ice head?"

"Just practicing my hydromancy," Lee said.

"It started as a sculpture of Harley, but it sort of, well, melted."

"Ice tends to do that," Joan noted.

"Why Harley, though?"

"Oh, I just, well, you know, I see her so often, if I want to make a detailed sculpture, it's easy to make her from memory."

"Right." Joan lifted the lid of the pizza box, but then thought better of it. She examined Lee's dorm to take her mind off of more pizza. Despite only being a second year student, Lee occupied one of the Senior dorms -the most spacious and private dorms on campus. Her parents had insisted that their darling daughter be given such a dorm right off the bat, rather than having to spend her first year with roommates, as every other student did.

In spite of the massive dorm available to her, Lee had barely decorated, and most of the space sat empty.

"Can I ask you a personal question, Lee?" While Lee would usually deny such a request, she had already ranted about most of her deep-seated psychological issues several days ago. She saw no harm in a little more soul-baring.

"Go ahead."

"What's your dating life like?" In answer, Lee snapped open the pizza box, grabbed a slice, and shoved half of it into her mouth in a single massive bite. She then turned to Joan and gestured to the chipmunk like bulge of her cheeks.

"Can't talk with your mouth full," Joan said flatly.

"Right. I can take a hint. Sorry I asked." After Lee overcame her initial moment of panic -and then spent a solid minute chewing her reactionary mouthful of pizza- she folded her hands on her lap apologetically.

"Sorry, dear. Force of habit," Lee admitted.

"Just another way I dodge uncomfortable questions from my parents."

"You just shove shit in your mouth?"

"They were very insistent that I never talk with my mouth full, and that is apparently one thing they don't want to look like hypocrites on," Lee explained. They were just fine being hypocrites about other things, which made them hypocrites about their desire to be hypocrites, which created a very circular spiral of hypocrisy that Lee didn't like to think about.

"Well, back on topic, you still don't have to talk about it if you don't want to," Joan said.

"If it makes you uncomfortable-""No, I should," Lee said.

"I should be able to talk about things with you that I can't with them. My parents are soulless monsters. You're not."

"Aww, that's the nicest thing anyone's ever said about me," Joan said. This earned a coy smile from Lee, though it faded as she drifted back to the topic at hand.

"It all comes back to my parents once again, you know," Lee said.

"I wasn't really allowed to socialize much on my own until they sent me here. Before that, the only people I ever spoke to were people who they paid to be around me."

"All of whom were British," Joan said. Lee gave a stiff nod. Her parents efforts to cultivate a "charming" accent in their daughter had left her with a very limited social circle.

"Exactly. As a result of that treatment, I find it very difficult to socialize normally, much less with, ah," Lee paused to go red in the face for a moment.

"Romantic intent." This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

"Ah, das ist unsinn," Joan said.

"You socialize just fine."

"I'm sorry, what was that?"

"You socialize just fine?" Joan repeated.

"No, before that," Lee said.

"Were you speaking German for a moment?"

"I'm usually speaking German," Joan said. She knew English, but not much.

"Didn't the campus do that auto-translation thingy?"

"It did not," Lee said. She checked the clock and memorized the time.

"Such disruptions to the school's enchantments are not uncommon, when there is a large burst of magical energy." Lee grabbed her purse from a nearby counter top and shouldered it. She paused for a moment, turning a cautious ear to the world around her. Such a magical hiccup often marked the daily apocalypse.

"Why so intense all of a sudden, Lee?" Joan asked.

"Is this another avoidance mechanism?"

"No," Lee said.

"Just keep an ear out, dear, I think we might be due for trouble."

"What kind of trouble?" A sudden scratching at the door of Lee's bedroom provided an answer that Lee could not. She tried to pause and analyze the sound -it was something dull, metallic, and it acted without rhythm. That meant it probably wasn't another werewolf in Lee's bedroom, but she had no idea what it might actually be.

"Joan, darling, would you mind turning on the sink?" Without a word, Joan backed out of her seat and towards the sink, never taking her eyes off the noisy bedroom door. She reached out to turn the handle, pausing as a loud pinging noise echoed across the dorm. Joan drew her hand back as something swatted it, leaving a large bruise.

"Ow! What the fuck was-" Another loud pinging sound accompanied something else hitting Joan in the head. She ducked down and covered her head as the loud noises -and the impacts- continued. A glint of silver bounced through the air, ricocheting off surfaces and striking Joan every time it bounced.

"Ow ow ow! Lee, help!"

"Sorry, just a moment," Lee said. Her bedroom door was now rattling nearly off it's hinges, before finally the handle turned and the door cracked open. Another surge of silver, this time joined by flecks of gold and brighter colors, surged through the air towards Lee. She reached into her purse and, in one fluid motion, drew her whip, swinging it at the oncoming tide of glittering pain. She managed to disrupt most of the metallic surge, though some of the sparkling assailants still struck true.

One of them impacted her wrist, and Lee felt something cold and metallic wrap around her wrist. A necklace, a gift from her parents deliberately left unworn, coiled itself around Lee's wrist and pulled downwards. The metallic links exerted unnatural strength as they dragged Lee's arm down, towards the leg of the table she stood near. As the hand holding her whip drew nearer and nearer to the table, the necklace extended its chain links and wrapped around the table leg, binding Lee in place with a golden chain.

With practiced deftness (and a bit of help from the magical nature of the whip), Lee tossed her whip from her bound hand to the other and flicked it in the direction of the sink. The end of the whip coiled around a handle and Lee pulled, letting the water flow. What started as a small burst became a torrent at Lee's call, and a wave of water swept across the entire apartment, freezing around anything Lee deemed a threat.

When the wave passed, a slightly bruised and slightly damp Joan stood to appraise the situation. Lee was gathering her icy prisoners on the table, next to the now-soggy pizza box, to examine them. The necklace that had sought to bind her wrist was now joined by several other necklaces, a few bracelets, a handful of rings, and some loose change. Their icy prisons wiggled slightly as the malevolent metal within struggled to free itself.

Joan stared down at the assortment of items and then looked up to Lee for an explanation.

"Why is your jewelry trying to kill us?"

"Not just jewelry," she said, pointing out the quarters and nickels that had been bouncing off Joan just a few moments ago.

"Money too."

"So metals, then," Joan said.

"Not metals," Lee corrected.

"Otherwise the components in our smartphones would be trying to kill us. It's valuables."

"Still leaning towards metals," Joan said, but she had better things to do right now than defend her own theories.

"Why is random metal stuff trying to kill us?"

"I have no idea, but I believe we shall find out, dear," Lee said. She coiled her whip and waved it towards the door. Sounds of panic and violence were already ringing in from the halls outside, as well as through the windows, reflecting the chaos that was quickly spreading across campus.

"Let's go find Harley and Vell, shall we?" Joan had a few other ideas, but she kept them to herself, mostly because Lee was the one with the magic. And the whip. The halls were a sorry sight, but Lee took the carnage in stride, as usual. Seeing a man who'd been shredded to death by killer dollar bills was new, admittedly, but she'd seen her share of blood and gore across a few hundred apocalypses. Lee shredded the murderous money with blades of ice, and Joan examined the scraps.

"Paper money too, eh," she said.

"I guess you were right. It is valuables."

"Put that down, dear, there's blood on it," Lee cautioned.

"I've handled blood before, it's fine," Joan said. That earned a concerned stare from Lee.

"I'm going for a medical degree, I've done dissections. Even took out a human heart once." The concerned stare intensified.

"I put it back!" After noticing no changes in the intensity or level of concern in Lee's eyes, Joan decided to change the subject.

"Did you text Harley yet?"

"Yes, she's set up something of a safe zone in the robotics lab," Lee said.

"And has Vell gotten back to you?"

"Yeah, he's apparently trying the same routine in his dorm room," Joan said.

"We should probably head there first. Harley's robot army can probably hold out longer than Vell swatting quarters with a heavy book, or whatever he's doing."

"Don't underestimate Vell, dear," Lee said.

"Only when it comes to violence," Joan shrugged.

"That guy not only wouldn't hurt a fly, I don't think he could." Lee stepped casually over the piles of broken jewelry and shattered coins. Joan stopped to examine the carnage for a moment. Dead center in the piles of glittering gore, guns drawn, was Vell, standing guard in front of his dorm room door.

"Hey Lee," he said.

"Morning Vell. I see you've been putting your guns to good use." Joan picked up one of the quarters that had been shot down. She looked through the bullet-hole dead-center in George Washington's face and examined every other coin, each of which had a matching hole clean through them.

"Having you just been shooting coins out of the air?"

"Yeah," Vell said.

"Those things move at like a hundred miles an hour!"

"Yeah," Vell said.

"How are you doing that?" Joan demanded.

"I, uh, aim at them, and then I shoot them," Vell said. He gestured with one of his pistols to demonstrate.

"Like it's easy?"

"Is it supposed to be hard?" Joan opened her mouth for another protest, and decided to stop herself before she spoke. The silence let Vell hear another rattle of incoming jewelry, and he turned his gun to the right and fired a shot without actually looking that direction. An explosion of silver and jewel shards scattered at the end of the hall, confirming the hit.

"Good... shot," Joan said. Vell turned to examine what he had shot. Most people did that before they fired, but that was apparently not necessary for Vell.

"Eh, I pulled a bit to the left," he said. Joan bit her tongue and moved on.

"Anyway, who all you got stashed in that dorm?"

"Oh, you know, my roommates, Freddy, that other blonde guy named Freddy, uh... several other people on the floor. Huh. I should really get to know more people."

"Let's save socializing for later," Lee suggested.

"Yeah, we'll have to, I'm pretty sure they barricaded the door behind me," Vell said. He knocked on the door of the dorm with the butt of his pistol.

"Hey guys, I'm still alive!"

"Good for you," Luke's voice shouted back.

"Do you want to come in? Because that'll take a while."

"We got a lot of shit piled up in front of this door," Cane said.

"Nah, I should be good, thanks though," Vell said.

"We're probably going to go pick up Harley and figure things out from there."

'Tell her I said hi," Freddy shouted.

"Will do," Vell said. He holstered his guns and headed for the exit, along with Lee and Joan.

"What a guy," Joan said.

"People are dropping like flies and all he can think to tell his crush is 'hi'."

"The awkwardness is part of his charm," Lee said.

"I guess if you find that sort of stuff charming," Joan said. She then pointed to the door of her own dorm.

"I want to stop in and grab something. Mind guarding the door while Vell helps me out, Lee?"

"I suppose," Lee said. Joan gave a thumbs up, then dragged Vell into their dorm by the wrist. He double-checked the windows while she started digging around in her work desk.

"So what're you looking for?" Vell asked.

"Just something that could be useful," Joan replied.

"Though I also wanted to ask you something. Freddy's crush on Harley got me thinking about romance…"

"Wait, seriously? Now?"

"Well, I mean-" Joan stopped and her eyes went wide.

"Oh no, not that. I don't want to bang- unless you want to?"

"Not right now, thanks."

"Okay, fine. Fine, right," Joan said, looking a little disappointed.

"That wasn't what I had in mind. At first. I was thinking about Lee. Has she ever mentioned like, having a crush on someone? Or even just that she thinks someone's hot?"

"Uh, no? Not that I know of."

"Damn."

"I'm, uh, glad you're looking out for her, but I think we have bigger problems than getting Lee a date."

"For sure," Joan said. She continued rummaging through her desk. She opened one that contained the research notes she'd supposedly thrown out and slammed it shut just as fast. Luckily Vell hadn't been looking.

"I'm just thinking, like, traumatic situations make people want companionship, right?"

"I think so? I'm no pyschologist but that sounds right."

"I'm pretty sure I'm right," Joan insisted.

"Anyway, I'm just thinking like, long term, after the murder money is dealt with, we got to get Lee a girlfriend. Speaking of dealing with it-" Joan grabbed a small chunk of black stone and clenched it tightly in her fist, trying to obscure most of it from view. She pulled the rock out of her drawer and then shoved it into her pocket as fast as she could.

"Okay, I'm good, let's go," she said.

"Okay. What'd you grab, though?"

"Just a little something something for an emergency," Joan said.

"Like Harley's always saying, 'don't even worry about'." Vell shrugged. He asked for a lot of trust from other people, the least he could do was occasionally trust in return. The two stepped back into the hall, rejoining Lee.

"Are we all ready to go?"

"Should be good," Joan said.

"Can't imagine it'll be too much trouble. Lee's the richest person on campus and we already dealt with all her shit."