All right, Calvin thought as he stripped out of his ridiculous outfit, taking a moment to light the damnable puff on fire before tossing it aside.

One of the Guys.

Calvin calmly assessed the situation while his bones shifted, and skin darkened.

We’ve got four people, most likely legends, but not quite as good as Karen, so sixth or seventh Break. They’ve obviously been hired to hunt me down by Maruk because otherwise he’d have to give me a loan. Calvin chuckled softly at his dry humor, checking himself in the empty bedroom’s mirror.

He looked like a handsome, androgynous old woman.

That’s the average? Okay. The party HAD been filled with women with mustaches.

Two of the legends are melee-base, Kala is unaccounted for, and the Uleisan in the light blue robes can counter and dispel.

She’d obviously be more immediately useful to me dead, but if I can curry favor with her and the people who taught her by keeping her alive, that would be wonderful. I’d love to learn her skills.

Calvin stripped out of his vest, leaving just the undershirt. He yanked open the drawers and was please to discover various frumpy clothes.

Calvin yanked his pants off and slid a long black skirt on, hopeful that that change in appearance would be enough to throw them off and allow a counter-attack.

He obviously couldn’t match any of them at their specialties, so he had to break them apart and confront their weaknesses with his strengths.

“Careful! That’s not the real one!” a Genosian accented voice travelled from down the hall. Shortly after, there was a crash of shattering glass door, and a fair amount of cursing.

Turns out I’ve got less time than I thought. Calvin thought, rolling up his sleeves and heading for the doorway with a tentative gait as close to Old Woman as he could manage.

Calvin ducked his head around the corner and spotted the two wizards dragging their saber wielding friend out into the main audience hall, where Kala was.

Calvin ducked his head back quickly, before they spotted him.

I need a way to get back to Kala, and fast, but this hall leads right back out where they came from. I can’t just waltz down the direction I came from. They’ll out me in an instant.

Hmm…Maybe I can…

Calvin shivered as a heavy blanket of Bent settled down around him, pressing in from every direction.

What is this? Calvin thought, waving his hand through the intangible sensation.

Aura of Bent Restriction Detected! Bent-Based Abilities Suppressed.

Joke’s on them, I only have two Bent left anyway! Calvin thought.

Then the room went black.

Your Stability is not strong enough to shrug off the effects. Your Will ∏₳⅍ ₿℮Ω₾∆ ꙌꙀ꓾꓾ꓺ’

That can’t be good.

***Elliot***

Blaring sirens were echoing through the tiny room, the lights flickering as Elliot typed furiously on the keyboard, watching the spell systematically corrupt Calvin’s system.

“Fuck!” Elliot desperately to do anything he could to halt the disabling of Calvin’s system. The illusion spell was a doozy. Not only did it take control of the target’s senses, it temporarily fried their System.

Temporarily, because everyone’s got a constant uplink, and it can be rebooted or reinstalled, but Calvin’s off the grid. Shit!

Elliot immediately began porting main files over to his backup thumb-drive before yanking it out of his computer.

There was no real computer, of course. No real thumb-drive, either. Everything in Elliot’s room was a symbol, a representation of the inner working of the alien hardware installed in Calvin’s brain. The thumb drive was simply a representation of the partition Elliot had backed up and disconnected.

Which is why Elliot’s room began rumbling, the lights finally going out while dust began to sift down from above.

Elliot curled up in the corner of his little black room, clutching the backup files to his chest and praying the spell wasn’t able to penetrate the unexpected custom hardware.

***Calvin***

The lights came back on all at once.

Calvin was standing knee-deep in a swamp that seemed to stretch on endlessly in every direction. Gnats hovered around his head and tried to land on his face, mud sucked onto his legs, and the overhead sun shone down with an uncomfortable heat.

It’s all fake, Calvin thought, scowling as he scanned the terrain, lifting one squelching foot out of the mud and feeling the water drip off of it. A good fake, though.

The spell had hijacked his senses and created hallucinatory terrain, effectively making him worse than blind.

Calvin knew all of this because the caster had failed to take the Tarak’s skin-sight away from him, likely because the caster was unaware of it, and didn’t have it. Calvin could still feel where the walls and floor were around him, and the basic shape of the furniture.

Calvin sighed.

This sucks.

He started tugging off his clothes, increasing the sharpness of the image around him. It looked like he was doing this commando.

Well, I don’t HAVE to take off my underwear, Calvin thought. Except…it was mens underwear and he was masquerading as an old woman.

Damnit.

Calvin glanced up and spotted a huge, pair of fangs in front of him as the spiderlike Ooze-weaver lunged forward with a ferocious squeal.

Calvin closed his eyes.

The ooze weaver went away, although he could still hear its angry screams.

I guess I’m a deaf old woman.

Here goes nothing.

Calvin tottered out into the hall, shaking with age and terror, ignoring his low-hanging boobs like an old woman would in an emergency.

Calvin took a gamble. No one had been anywhere near him when those spells had landed, so they were most likely area spells, a combined effort designed to trap everyone inside the illusion. IF they were designed to trap and corral everyone, surely it was plausible an old woman had been rousted out of bed by the commotion then hit by the effects?

“AAIIII, What in the sand-blasted abyss is going on?” Calvin screeched with a surprisingly old-woman-ish voice, running out into the hall. “Get away from meee!” He waved in the direction of the ooze-weaver’s aggressive noises and deliberately slammed into a wall, rattling his teeth.

He stood and felt the wall in faux confusion, before the Ooze weaver chittered behind him again.

“EEEE!” Calvin screeched and pushed off of the ‘invisible wall’ and slammed into the other side of the hall before ‘figuring out’ what direction was available.

He then ran down the hall, making sure to pace himself and not flat-out sprint as fast as he could: Annie Bundersnatch had arthritis and weak limbs.

The Ooze weaver was herding him into the main hall, of course.

Now, this could go one of two ways. The first: They recognize Calvin immediately, and try to capture him, in which case Calvin would get a single surprise attack before getting his ass kicked.

The other way: They assumed they’d caught an old woman in their net, giving him time to launch an attack on the one he wanted to: The counterspeller.

How in the Abyss am I supposed to disable the woman without killing her? Calvin thought as he sensed the hallway open up into blurry nothingness. His max range was about fifteen feet. Anything beyond that was far too blurry for his skin to feel.

Isn’t this where you usually give me some unsolicited advice? Calvin thought. Only silence answered him.

Did they kill Elliot? he thought, glancing over his shoulder ‘desperately’ at the ooze-weaver herding him. Wouldn’t be the worst thing.

A few steps later, he felt a gaze on him, and a few steps leter, he made out a human lump at the very edge of his perception.

There’s one of them.

The gaze was mildly amused, and uncomfortable at Calvin’s show of wrinkly skin.

Looks like I’ve got the initiative, for now.

The image of a person appeared in front of him, raising a hand.

“Calm down, ma’am, the Ooze weaver is gone.”

“What?” Calvin breathed, looking over his shoulder. Sure enough, It was gone, replaced by this illusionary black-haired fellow in front of him.

“There’s been…a bit of an event. You’re perfectly safe, ma’am, just sit over there with the others until we get everything sorted out.”

He pointed toward the front of the mansion, where dozens of guests became visible in the swamp, sitting in the mud in front of the invisible double doors.

“What’s going on?” Calvin demanded, putting his hands aggressively on his hips. Annie Bundersnatch was nobody’s fool.

“One moment I’m in bed, trying to sleep through Maruk’s dull party, and the next moment I’m in the middle of the swamps of Leyore. You tell me what’s happening right now, young man!”

“Calm down, ma’am,” The wizard’s mouthpiece said, placatingly, holding his hands up. “This should all be over in minutes, and then you can go back to your bed, but standing out in the open, where you are now, is dangerous.”

He pointed to the ooze-weavers looming over them in the trees.

“We can protect you better over there, with the others.”

“What’s your name?” Calvin asked scowling.

“Matthias,” the wizard – no, he’s a sorcerer – said.

“You’re going to hear from me about this,” Calvin said with impotent anger, heading for the others, finally covering his saggy boobs with an arm, much to the relief of the two humanoid figures he could feel.

Then a pair of Ooze-weaver’s rushed past him, locket in combat.

Underneath the illusion, he could feel Kala’s form, wrestling with the Genosian, trying to kick the man’s ribs as he drove her toward the wall, not having much luck in the stronger man’s overwhelming grip.

That gives me three of them. Good enough.

Calvin squeaked and flinched away from the ooze weaver illusion and stumbled as naturally as he could manage, falling and crawling the last couple feet toward the feminine lump of displaced air.

“Don’t worry about those, and just go!” The illusionary man said, pointing toward the huddled guests with a frustrated scowl.

Calvin stood leapt up, and kicked the counterspeller in the chest, blade jutting from his toe. Keeping her alive wasn’t practical at the moment, even if it would draw the ire of those who taught her.

I’ll send them a nice gift basket.

***Matthias***

Ugh, this old woman is pissing me off! The wrinkled, albeit slightly handsome hag was standing right in the middle of the room, where Euha was fighting the Gadveran princess, with modest success

Furniture shrapnel and shattered glass flew everywhere as the princess warded off the Genosian’s attacks, seemingly heedless of Hallucinatory Terrain. Did she have abnormal stability or some kind of sight augmentation? He wasn’t sure, but the old woman was inches away from becoming a smear on the floor when the two barreled past her, their battle carrying them to the other side of the hall, where they smashed into the glass wall.

“Don’t worry about those, and just go!” Matthias had his illusion shout. I swear to Rian if that old bat doesn’t move soon, I’m going to move her by force.

The uncomfortably naked old woman scrambled backwards in fright, at an angle that made Matthias avert his eyes to protect the sanctity of his mind. She came to a stop close to their bemused counterspeller. Then she did something Matthias wasn’t expecting.

She leapt to her feet with the speed of a Veteran and kicked Suppan in the chest before she could react, lifting the wizard off the ground with the sheer force of the blow, her eyes going wide with surprise and sudden pain.

“That’s the counterspeller gone,” The old woman said, waving her hand through the air as Suppan’s Suppression spell unraveled.

She gave him a toothy grin, looking straight at him despite the illusion no doubt showing her nothing but swamp and trees.

It’s the summoner! Matthias thought, a chill going down his spine. The pieces fell into place quickly, as Matthias’s Mind digested the information. The boy had some kind of illusion or Polymorphic Ability, along with some kind of extra sense that Matthias’s illusion couldn’t account for. If he had simply resisted the illusion, he wouldn’t be able to interact with it to the degree he had, which allowed him to fool them.

It’s not affecting the princess, it’s not affecting the summoner: It’s a waste of my concentration.

Matthias made a snap decision, dropping the illusion and focusing on less intricate debuffs.

“Castle!” He shouted as the old woman with floppy tits charged toward him. Matthias tried not to look away. He’d already made that mistake once.

Euha broke away from Princess Kala with a parting shot that clipped her chin, staggering her as he broke toward Matthias.

Castle was the code to drop whatever you were doing and protect the Bent-Specialists.

Euha interposed himself between Matthias and the old woman while Matthias ran toward Suppan. He had to stabilize her with Illusionary Flesh. They could get her healed up as long as he kept her alive just a little longer.

Euaha roared and body slammed the old woman halfway across the floor, giving Matthias the time he needed to place his hand on the puncture wound right above Suppan’s heart. His Colleague had a glassy-eyed stare as she bled out, but she wasn’t dead, not yet.

Come on, come on!

He slapped his hand down, not bothering to mind the thick blood from her heart, ignoring the battle raging on behind him as Euaha juggled both the princess and the hag.

Illusionary Flesh

22/30 Bent Remaining.

Matthias fused her wounds shut with fake tissue, and filled her vessels with fake blood. It would fade over the course of the next few days, hopefully giving her body a chance to fix the damage itself, but he was pretty sure a wound straight to the heart would require several applications and constant monitoring.

Suppan let out a harsh gasp as her body came back from the brink of death, and she curled around her chest.

She’ll live, Matthias thought in relief, turning back to the fight. Euaha was having trouble with both the kids, being driven into a corner by their coordinated assault.

Matthias tried to get a good bead on the hag, but she ducked down and to the left, using the much larger Genosian as cover, as if she could sense the man’s gaze, which she most likely could.

That’s fine, Matthias thought with a growl, changing his target.

Torpor.

22/30 Bent remaining.

The invisible bolt leapt into Kala and stimulated her brain into flooding her body with signals that she was tired, and it was time to sleep.

The princess staggered in place, sinking to her knees as her willpower fought off the effects, but not quite fast enough.

Euha caught Calvin in the ribs with a huge fist, sending the boy sailing across the hall at break-neck speeds.

That got him, Matthias thought with a grin. Euha had a powerful Body, and he’d trained to draw every ounce of Strength, Endurance and Kinesthetics out of it that he could. The summoner was no match for that. This would be over soon. He turned his gaze to Suppan. He should make sure she was stable.

The double doors at the end of the hall crashed open, revealing a massive Genosian woman with shiny skin, absolutely covered in blood.

Oh, what now? Matthias demanded irately.

Then Euha flew across the hall and impacted against the other side, putting yet another body-shaped dent in the wall.

***Calvin***

Calvin saw the rib-shot coming, but he wasn’t fast enough to stop it. He turned to mitigation instead. The Counterspeller was out of commission for now, so he could attempt this.

Here come the wasps.

Calvinian Summoning

Calvinian summoning…

CALVINIAN SUMMONING!

If felt like he was reaching into a hole for the wasp pattern that had always been there, but now it was totally gone.

Calvin changed tactics to Shifting. Hopefully it was undamaged.

The sensations of Shifting was like some invisible force that normally kept all the Bent tightly controlled and organized in a specific pattern, was completely absent. Calvin had to hem the Bent in and guide it to do exactly what he wanted.

Needless to say, the fist hit him in the ribs before he could finish and catapulted him across the room, scattering the Bent he’d pulled out to the winds.

What the Abyss is going on??

It was like Calvin didn’t have a system.

The training wheels were off, Calvin realized.

I’m not going to be stuck in the body of an old woman for the rest of my life, am I?

Calvin dismissed One of the guys, and the Genosian flinched backward as the old woman began morphing into a young man, making a superstitious warding gesture.

I guess not. Might as well capitalize on the breathing room.

Calvin pulled the Bent out, shoving the sensation of his bones creaking and grinding against each other into the back of his mind as he carefully crafed the Bent into the four-way bridge that he’d gotten used to using since he’d unlocked it in Shadowboxing. Making it from memory was difficult, taxing, and it had a few leaks and dangling strands of Bent, but it was basically what he needed.

Look Ma, no System!

He targeted his right hand, the knife in his left, the floor, and his body.

Calvin coughed as he slumped to the ground, his limbs finishing their stretching trick, his skin lightening to it’s original shade.

I think he might have busted a rib, Calvin thought as he poked the tender spot where the Genosian’s fist had caught him. Nope, just gonna bruise like crazy tomorrow. If I live to see it.

The Genosian shook his unease off and approached him, taking out the collar. “Are you going to give up now, young Maje?” He asked.

Calvin waited until the man was too close to dodge, then threw the knife at him.

Normally, throwing a knife is an absolutely stupid thing to do. Nine times out of ten you miss, or they dodge, or block, or it hits handle-first. But even if you hit them, even if you make that perfect shot and your knife sinks into their body just like you planned; one little stab isn’t going to put someone entirely out of the fight. And now they have your knife!

In this case, it was different, though.

Calvin shifted the weight from his hand, his body, and the floor into the knife as it was leaving his palm, blade pointed toward the Genosian warrior.

The man whipped his solid steel club up to intercept the knife, and managed to divert the tip up a bit before the three hundred and fifty pound jerrytanium blade caught his club and slammed it into his chest, the sheer inertia carrying the man across the hall and slamming him into the wall.

The Genosian let out a harsh gasp as the club left a dent in his chest.

You bruise my ribs, I break yours!

Then the front door slammed open, and Ella tromped in, covered in blood, with his spell components over her shoulder.

We just might win this one, Calvin thought, waiting for Elliot’s inevitable retort about jinxing things; It didn’t come.