Felicia surveyed the crowd of students with more disdain than usual. Previously, she only spared her attention for someone not immediately relevant to herself if there was a problem, which would soon cease to be a problem. In her capacity as an extension of the disciplinary committee, she was obligated to maintain careful observation of every passerby and their adherence to school doctrines.

Even if Andronicus didn’t have an atypically low rate of fights or anything to make committee duties the least bit interesting, Felicia was consigned to patrols due to her cracked ribs. Patrols, and one other pressing issue.

A disciplinary committee member met her at the intersection by a grassy quad between the chemistry building and the English hall where groups of students often congregate. Felicia couldn’t bother to hide her contempt for the situation when she would rather be refining her technique or filling the skill gap in the team left by Adrien’s hospitalization.

“Is he here?” the committee member asked.

Felicia motioned toward a guy on the far end of the grass who never seemed to talk to the same person for more than a minute or two. Bland in appearance, lacking any notable feature to stick him in memory, but more in a nondescript manner than a boring one. Almost suspiciously so. “He had companions, but my presence must have scared them away.”

“Are you sure you’re up to this? If you’re not feeling up to it, I can get someone else.”

“Don’t patronize me.”

Students scattered out of Felicia’s path, but when the subject of their observation noticed her approach, he rooted around in his bag, then took on a nonchalant posture.

“Al Wecht,” Felicia coldly greeted.

“Oh, Miss Belafonte,” he said as if just noticing her. “What a surprise! Do you need something from me?”

“Don’t play coy.”

“Who’s playing?”

The committee member stepped in. “Al, we got a tip from a student that you’re distributing illicit photographs of Andronicus students.”

“What, dirty pics? Sorry, you’ve got the wrong guy. The photography club hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“No one mentioned the photography club,” Felicia suspiciously remarked.

“No one had to. I’ve been a member for two and a half years, and the disciplinary committee has been trying to pin this dirty pic racket on us since before I joined!”

“Yet it persists,” Felicia derided. “Why don’t you show us what’s in your bag and we can all quit wasting each other’s time.”

Al clutched his bag possessively. “You can’t just go through my bag without my permission.”

“We can,” Felicia’s barely tolerated partner replied. “It’s called a bag search, and we can seize anything we determine as illicit or dangerous.”

“The only thing dangerous in here is my chemistry homework,” Al smarmily retorted. “Besides, the only leverage you have to force a bag search is prevent me access to school buildings until it’s done, and I have nowhere to be anytime soon. I have every right to refuse.”

“Yes, you do,” Felicia affirmed. With a quick flick of her wrist, she drew her blade and pinned Al’s foot to the ground. The cry that followed was more out of shock than pain. By the resistance she felt between the point passing through his shoe into the ground, she could tell she missed any bone and cartilage. It was far from comfortable, but nowhere near excruciating. While Al reeled, Felicia helped herself to his bag and systematically went through it.

The committee ran to Al’s side. “Gees, what did you do?” he cried. “We can’t just stab a student, even if he’s a suspect!”

“You can’t,” Felicia corrected without pausing her search. When Al reached to pull the rapier out, she harshly said, “Touch my sword and I will put it through your other foot.”

Her bag search turned up papers, a handful of notebooks, a chemistry textbook, a laptop. She stopped when she found a wad of cash hastily shoved underneath it all. “What is this?”

“Pocket money,” Al grunted through grit teeth.

The committee member quickly thumbed through the cash. “Four hundred and seventy-eight dollars. That’s a lot to walk around with.”

“Textbooks are expensive.”

Suspicious, but not incriminating. All of Al’s belongings on the lawn and nothing to implicate him, it looked as if nothing would come out of this encounter. Then Felicia noticed Al’s empty bag rattled when she dropped it. There was a yelp when she drew her sword out of Al’s foot, then slashed the side of his bag, spilling out a handful of flash drives. Some of them were marked with green tape, a couple had yellow tape, and one of them had a band of red tape.

Felicia tossed one to the committee member. “See what’s on this.”

“It’s homework!” Al insisted. He shut right up when he realized just how dire the situation became now that the sword was no longer occupied with his foot.

The committee member had a tablet handy and plugged in the drive. He shook his head and scowled. “It’s a bunch of PNGs and a few video files. But they’re corrupted.”

“I wonder how that could have happened,” Al smugly muttered.

“I wonder…” Felicia noticed a tug on sword as she traced it over Al, further noticing a lump in his pocket following the movement. He shifted away as if in consideration for his foot. “Is anything retrievable?” Felicia asked her partner, eyeing Al like a wolf eyes a deer.

“There’s too much to tell at a glance. I’ll have to look through it in depth.”

“We’re confiscating these flash drives,” she informed Al without a hint of sympathy.

“Fine, take them!” Al jeered. “They’re useless now anyways!”

“You’ll get them back once we’ve cleared them of any illicit material,” the committee member assured. “Anything else, Miss Belafonte?”

“I’m through with him,” Felicia replied. “Help him gather his things and take him to a nurse.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Anything else.”

Al growled all the way to his clubroom. “‘Not bad enough for a crutch.’ ‘Your foot can still take weight.’ ‘Disinfect it and you should be fine,’” he repeated the nurse’s words in a mocking tone. “‘Clean cut’ my ass! It still hurts!” The cast wasn’t cumbersome and the bleeding was minimal, but the disinfectant stung, and that was more of an inconvenience than he was willing to put up with.

It was late, nearly curfew. There was only one person in the clubroom who, when Al entered, closed the shades and sat down.

“How’d it go?” he asked.

“Horribly,” Al disgruntledly answered. “But I was lucky I wasn’t carrying anything physical. The hard ass bitch found the drives and stuck me once.”

“You scrubbed the drives, right?”

“Of course. We’ll know tomorrow if anything survived. We should really keep backups.”

“You know we can’t do that. It isn’t safe to leave evidence lying around. Plus, the price goes down if we can make dupes.”

“Right. Oh! I managed to save one drive!” Al put a nicked flash drive marked with red tape and a smattering of blood on the table. “Thought she stabbed it for a while there, but everything on it is still good.”

The photography club member stared at the drive, then at all, then back at the drive. A smile crept across his face. “Is that the–”

“Primo stuffs,” Al replied with a chef’s kiss of his fingers. “Only the most cultured material, courtesy of Mar–”

“No names, Al!” the secretive club member interrupted. “Just in case.”

“Not like we’d get off any lighter if we were caught with these. Those are the results of the summer track meet between Andronicus and Calbourne High, courtesy of the Stargrazer himself. Or herself. Locker rooms, bathrooms, and wardrobe malfunctions from both sides.”

“What a mad lad. Those will go for gold. And props to you for saving it!”

“I also managed to pawn off a few of the weaker pics before they jacked the stash.” He put the wad of money on the table. “A few hundred bucks, minus my cut, of course.”

“Of course, I’d say you earned it. By the way… you wouldn’t happen to have snagged a pick of her highness while she was shaking you down?”

“Nah. Didn’t have a good angle. She would have stabbed my phone if I tried.”

“Pity. There’s a king’s ransom out for anyone who can get so much as an upskirt of the esteemed fencing queen.”

“Sure, a king’s ransom, and also hard jail time, probably.”

“No reward without risk.”

“Speaking of, the disciplinary committee’s been cracking down hard recently. It’s going to get much worse now that the fencers are helping.”

“I wouldn’t think about it too much. We’re not the only troublemakers the jailers have to worry about. As long as we don’t ‘tickle the dragon,’ we’ll make it out like we do every year, and with a lot more cash than we started.”

“Alright. I’ve got to meet with a few more ‘suppliers’ before they get caught. Then I’ll print out what we’ve got for distribution.”