It was finally time, technically it was 2 days until Ky was leaving but Rosewell told Harlan that his last day would be mostly debriefs and warnings about what could and couldn’t be said about the facility.

Harlan found out one of the kids could color things with their magic and traded a week of desserts to have him decorate his room.

Next was food, they decided they would just take their dinner into Harlan’s room, it wasn’t normally allowed, meal time was designed to try and weed out anti-social types who might end up abusing their powers in a way the kingdom did not want. And to find the anti-social types that would abuse their powers exactly how the kingdom wanted.

For Drinks it was apple juice, they were given a small keg by one of the cooks, he just didn’t want to have to cook special meals for Ky anymore and was glad to see him leave.

Some of the other children didn’t like that they got a special party, they didn’t know why and they didn’t ask. They were just petty children, one of them managed to cast his curse on the keg, the apple juice was now a hard cider.

Things went well, until they didn’t, after Relly finished the normal apple juice handed out during the meal she started drinking from the keg, the rest hadn’t realized what was in it until they also finished their drinks and went to get some.

Reet realized and gave a glass to Harlan and Zella. He wasn’t too bitter about being her whipping boy, but he liked pranks.

2 glasses in Zella tried to stand and realized how unstable she was, her hair tried to hold her straight, but even it was tipsy. Reet lost it, laughing far too loudly,

Zella knew he was the cause, and she agreed with her hair, he had to pay, Harlan and Ky tried to stop her once they realized what she was going to do.

Harlan wasn’t as drunk due to his inhuman physiology, but he still tripped when he stood too quickly, falling right into Ky.

Zella struck Reet hard, when he hit the wall he let out a loud yelp, her drunken state made it harder to control how much force went in her hits, Reet’s drunken state had him not realize he had cracked a rib.

As it turned out they were both angry drunks.

He ripped his water skin off his hat and he had a full head of flaming hair.

Zella struck again, Reet dodged. And singed her hair in the process, he ran for the door, her hair hadn’t made a sound, but he thought he heard it scream in rage. He burst outside the room, jumping over the railing and catching himself on the way down to the next floor, soon he was on the ground floor and in the middle of the dining room.

Zella came down too, with a thump as her hair barely broke her fall from the 2nd floor.

Ky was running down the stairs after them, trying to calm her down.

Harlan was just staggering down after them and carrying Relly since she didn’t want to be alone and she felt sick. He saw guards in that same blinding armor pop out of thin air, he realized they were always there, just invisible.

By the time he got to ground level it was chaos, Zella was crying and her hair was fighting off a guard, Reet had let himself be taken to get away from her, different kids either trying to fight her or the guards, the smarter ones just ran to a corner of the room.

And one of them, 15 at least. In the middle of a gut busting laugh, Harlan heard Relly.

“He did it, that one, he made the apple juice weird.”

Harlan couldn’t blame the alcohol, he was just angry.

He handed Relly off to a guard on the sidelines and ran at the boy who was laughing.

In the chaos he never heard him coming.

Harlan struck him as hard as he could, his teeth went flying and his jaw went slack. The boy spit up blood, he looked over to see Harlan coming with a second strike.

He hadn’t known that Harlan wasn’t completely human so he tried to blood with his elbow, his father had taught him that to try and break his opponents hand in a bar fight.

Harlan went into a grab instead, and twisted the boy’s arn until he saw bones.

Harlan was going for a third strike when he lost control of his body.

Relly had screamed seeing the blood and bones, everyone within 30 feet of her slumped over, unable to move due to the pain in their minds.

The guards cleaned up the mess, Zella was talked down when Rosewell showed up, she held Zella in her arms and combed her hair with her hand.

Everyone who was caught in Relly’s panic was sent to the infirmary and put into a short coma so they didn’t need to feel the pain, there wasn’t really anything the doctors could do, the mind was linked with the soul, and it was a very poorly explored field.

It’s why Relly was so important to them.

Harlan was woken up 3 days later, the rest wouldn’t wake up for another day.

As soon as a doctor heard him shift in bed they contacted Rosewell.

“Care to explain what happened?” Her voice split his head all over again, but he felt he needed to clear things up first.

“I… one of the other children did something to our apple juice, made Zella and Reet act all crazy, things snowballed from there.”

“And the boy you looked to be ready to kill?” Harlan winced, thinking back he felt he may have overreacted.

“Relly said he did something to our juice, I… it’s not the juices fault, I was just so angry.”

“Honesty is good, but you still broke his arm and they had to reform his jaw and many of his teeth. You are being demoted to a red badge, you were under no magical effect, it was just alcohol. As it stands you are too valuable to let go of, and the other boy did in a sense try to poison you all, he has been removed.”

“Is… is everyone else alright?”

“Ky recovered already, he was closer to Zella and only caught the edge of the attack, he has left however. I do hope that your party was worth the trouble it caused. Relly was terrified, thinking she had killed everyone, seeing you helped her calm down some, but we are going to be putting her with a specialist until further notice. Reet and Zella hardly remembered what happened, they were far more drunk than you. they are also being stuck as red badges for the foreseeable future.”

“Ah, that’s a relief.”

“What part of this is a relief? That you didn’t kill the other boy? That Relly was traumatized from seeing your lifeless bodies? I treated you more like a child because of your age, but clearly that was the wrong approach, as soon as your pain subsides you will be back in soul research until I say otherwise.”

Harlan had been scolded by his mother before, but this was different, there was more rage and less fear in her voice, he still couldn’t tell if the motherly or the serious her was the false face.

2 guards calmly knocked and were granted entrance to the royal dining hall.

They walked over to the 4th princess and lightly tapped her shoulder, whispering the details into her ear.

She bolted up, not having time she just left a sound spell to say excuse me, rushing down the halls into the gate room nearby she prayed it was still open, that they hadn’t closed it for security reasons.

It was still open, she slipped through without stopping, alarms were blaring in the facility, guards from the noble bastards section were being redirected to the odd children.

She was halfway through the hallway when Relly’s attack hit her, luckily not close enough to be hurt much, just left with a throbbing headache.

She nearly tore the door off its hinges when she rushed in.

Zella was in tears, Ky was trying to talk to her, Harlan was laying on top of an older boy, she wasn’t sure who all the blood belonged to yet.

Relly stood over him trying to wake him up, panicking.

Rosewell picked her up and checked his vitals, she told her that he was alright, Relly didn’t calm down at all yet, trying to wake him up still.

She set her down and told her to wait, then walked toward Zella.

Ky saw her and explained what happened, he smelled the alcohol when Reet had dropped his cup during the fight in Harlan’s room.

“Zella! It's alright, you just need to calm down, remember, you control it, it doesn’t control you.”

Rosewell slowly walked toward her and then held her, she finally calmed, her breath stunk of alcohol.

After the fighting had ended it was time for interviews, she found out that yes the boy Harlan had beaten had a power to turn liquids into alcohol, low value compared to the ones who he had hurt with his childish prank, he had been bragging about it to his tablemates.

He was put into a coma until he recovered, then removed from the program, lucky that he had a benign curse that allowed him to leave without having to be put down.

Rosewell was angry, but more afraid, she loved Relly like a daughter.

Relly had been in the facility since she was an infant, and the boy had caused her harm physically and mentally without even having a reason.

She pondered if she should just toss Harlan into solitary confinement and have him work until they found out how to replace him.

She discarded the idea after a day, if they got him to feel indebted to the kingdom for training him to use his powers he was of more use than just teaching them how to make souls for items, and with Ky gone their group would need a serious figure to balance out Reet, and Relly did seem to like him.

Eventually she got the message she was waiting for, and walked to the infirmary.