“Good morning students of the Einstein-Odinson Academy of Paracausal Forces!”

The stuttering voice of Principal Isaac Goodwell boomed out across the entire campus. Vell jumped out of bed and tried to hurry through getting prepared for the day. The last time Goodwell had made such an announcement, the floor had turned to lava. Vell had very low expectations for whatever Goodwell was introducing today. Before he’d even finished getting dressed, Vell grabbed a satchel of runestones and shoved it into his back pocket. Always paid to be prepared.

“It’s time for one of the College’s most treasured and time-honored traditions, going all the way back to 2010.”

Vell froze halfway through brushing his teeth, then resumed. That didn’t sound right, but nothing here ever sounded entirely right. While the Principal took a dramatic pause -which surely had Harley screaming, wherever she was- Vell stepped out of his bedroom to find his roommates already assembled. Cane, for some reason, was wearing tactical gear including goggles, thick gloves, and a padded vest. A bad omen if Vell had ever seen one.

The door to their dorm room opened, and an automated delivery robot walked in, holding a small box in its hands. The bot lifted the lid with one hand and displayed the contents: four handheld paintball guns, in the style of pistols, each one of them labeled as belonging to Vell and each of his roommates.

“The rules are simple,” the principal boomed. “Tag your enemies, don’t get tagged yourself. Last one standing wins a gold star.”

Vell took the paintball pistol in hand and gave it a quick spin. It was no revolver, but it’d do -for now. Luke took hold of his own pistol and gave it a leery eye.

“They stole this from a TV show,” he said.

“Yeah,” Cane agreed. “But it’s fun.”

“I still think you’re overdressed for the occasion,” Luke said, eyeing Cane’s body armor.

“Nah, this shit gets intense,” Cane said. “My brother tells stories about this, and man, you’d think he was talking about Vietnam.”

Cane locked and loaded his gun, then braced his shoulder against the door.

“Vell, you’re going to go grab the girls, I assume?”

“I was thinking about it, yeah,” Vell said. If this was a yearly tradition, he was sure Harley had some sort of automated paintball death machine set up and running for just such an occasion, and Vell wanted it on his side.

“Alright, you want to head out now,” Cane said, pointing to the door with a tactical gesture. “In about ten minutes everyone’s going to be done battle planning and shit is really going to pop off.”

“I’m going to go meet up with my boyfriend too,” Luke said. “Might bring him around here if shit hasn’t ‘popped off’ too badly.”

Luke saluted once to mock Cane’s military gear and then headed out the door. Cane listened for the sound of paintball gunfire, but heard only silence. He nodded Vell towards the door.

“Alright, get out there, stick to cover, and watch your back,” Cane instructed. “I’m going to stay here and hold down the fort solo.”

“Cane, I’m right here,” Renard said. He gestured to his own chest. “I can help-”

As Renard pointed at himself with his paintball gun, his finger slipped on the trigger and he painted his own chest a bright shade of purple. After staring down at the stain for a second, Renard sighed.

“I’ll go make some snacks,” he said. Vell shook his head. Even when it was non-lethally, Renard was always the first to go.

“Alright, sounds like a plan,” Vell said to Cane. “Do you want to like, uh, turn this place into a fort, or are you just going to try and ride out the first wave of craziness? Should I bother coming back here?”

“I don’t know, like I said, this shit pops off,” Cane said. “I’m going to do whatever it takes to survive. You do the same. And get moving, man, you’ve already killed like two minutes.”

“Right, I’m going, I’m going,” Vell said. He sprinted out the door and headed for Harley’s dorm. Just for the sake of expediency, Vell pulled out his phone to call Harley on the way.

“Hey Vell,” she answered. “You want to team up for the paintball thing, right?”

“No actually, I was calling just to try and sell you some multivitamins,” Vell said. “That chick from the other day was right, this company really isn’t a pyramid scheme!”

“You fucking nerd,” Harley chuckled. “We’re teaming up. Get to my dorm, and fast. You only got a few minutes now.”

“A few minutes until what?”

“Until shit gets weird, Harlan,” Harley said. “You know how it is around here. Harley out.”

After Harley hung up, Vell put the phone away and looked around the quad. There were a few people like him sprinting from building to building, cautiously clutching a paintball gun in their hands, but Vell saw no signs of any incoming insanity. The campus was quiet.

Vell started sprinting towards Harley’s dorm. On the campus grounds, there was nothing more frightening than silence. Vell had made it halfway across the quad when his ten-minute timer hit nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds. One second passed in complete silence, save for the echo of a single one of Vell’s footsteps across the quad. Then the ten minute mark came.

The doors of a nearby lab thundered open so hard they nearly came free of their hinges. A legion of students wielding heavily-modified paint ball guns and clad in strange reflective armor plates marched forward in unison, following in formation behind a single professor.

“Form up,” the professor shouted. “Present arms!”

The paintball legion changed formation, taking the shape of a perfect phalanx. Vell kept running and tried not to look over his shoulder at the students too much. Up ahead of him, he could see the windows of a nearby dorm building open in unison like the cannon ports of a pirate ship.

“Activate shields, now!”

Every member of the paintball legion slammed a fist against their reflective armor. Vell saw a shimmering barrier engulf them just before the sound of paintball fire rang out from above. Vell ducked for cover behind a nearby bush as the world exploded into ten thousand colors. The paintball legion never moved, as every droplet of paint vanished the moment it touched their energy barrier.

“Shields at maximum capacity,” one of the shielded students said. “No repeats of last year’s power fluctuations.”

“Excellent,” the professor said. “Maintain power at safe levels.”

The volley from the dorms faded as students realized their attacks were futile. No sooner had the last paintball been fired than the dorms of a second lab slammed open. A second group of battle-ready students emerged, wearing no armor, but bearing a large, heavily-modified paintball cannon on a cart in the midst of their group.

“Fire the barrier-piercing kinetic accelerator!” The lead professor cried. “You’re not running us over with your shields this year, Coltsman!”

“Eat it, Gunlas!” The other professor cried. In response, Professor Gunlas fired their paintball cannon. The rubbery bubble of paint sailed through the air, spinning wildly and sparking with energy, until it collided with the energy barrier. The paintball did indeed pierce the energy barrier, showering the shielded students in paint, but the aftereffects of it’s impact didn’t stop there. The barrier shimmered and crackled with energy, and the circuitry wired into the shield-projecting armor the students wore began to spark. Eventually the shield began to waver and give off huge bolts of electricity.

“Oh, the interaction of an energy-charged projectile and the shield generators has created a negative reaction,” Professor Coltsman said.

“Like in Dune?” Gunlas replied.

“Exactly like in Dune!”

Then the shield exploded, and everyone died.

“Alright, get out there, stick to cover, and watch your back,” Cane instructed. “I’m going to stay here and hold down the fort solo.”

“Cane, I’m right-”

“Don’t point that at yourself,” Vell said. He grabbed Renard’s gun and pointed it away from his chest. Hopefully Renard would last at least a little longer this loop. “I’m going to meet up with Harley, see you guys later.”

Vell practically leaped out the door and sprinted to the quad. He pulled out his phone and called Harley again, for different reasons this time.

“Hey Harley,” he said.

“What’s up, Vell. You got any idea what blew us up yesterday?”

“I was right on top of it, actually,” Vell said. “Two competing groups of tech bros basically had a crazy powerful gun and an energy shield and they exploded when they shot at each other.”

“Oh. Like in Dune?”

“Exactly like in Dune,” Vell said. He ducked behind the bench that had covered him on the first loop and waited. “Anyway, I’m right here and I’m pretty sure I can stop it. If you wanna come out to that wonky looking bench on the quad, though, more help couldn’t hurt.”

“Which wonky-looking bench? The one that looks like an elephant sat in it or the one that has a weird stain in the wood?”

Vell looked over his shoulder for a second.

“Weird stain.”

“Oh no, I can’t make it there in time. Good luck, Vell!”

“Thanks. It’s almost time. If I live through this, I’ll be at your dorm soon.”

“If we don’t live through this, meet me in the afterlife, we can ghost-bang until Rapture or Ragnarok or whatever,” Harley said.

“Sounds like a plan.”

Vell hung up and put the phone back in his pocket before the word’s he had just heard fully hit him. It had been a while since Harley had propositioned him so brazenly. Apparently he was fair game now that he’d been single for a while.

Vell shook his head to shake loose any untoward thoughts. He had an apocalypse to prevent. The timer ticked over once again, and the legion of shielded students marched forward. Professor Coltsman didn’t have time to say “Shields up” before Vell pegged him square in the chest with a paintball. Across the quad, his would-be rival also emerged.

“Fire the barrier-piercing kinetic accelerator!” The lead professor cried. “You’re not-”

The soft splat of a paintball against Professor Gunlas’ armor cut him off mid-sentence. Vell followed it up with a few shots at his students, just to be safe.

“Dude,” one of the splattered students said. “We’re kind of trying to have a rivalry here!”

Armed students on either side of the quad glared angrily at Vell. He shrugged.

“Sorry,” Vell said. “But since you’re out of the game, maybe you should double check that their weird cannon doesn’t cause a nuclear explosion when it interacts with your weird shield?”

“Oh. Like in Dune?”

“Exactly like in Dune,” Vell said. “Uh, hypothetically. I wouldn’t know. Good luck with that.”

Vell turned and ran away before any of the students he hadn’t shot yet remembered to be mad at him. He ducked into the sophomore dorms, where Harley’s dorm room waited, and nearly stepped into a puddle of paint.

The dorm halls were coated wall to wall in splatters of every possible color. Firstly, Vell was glad that the school janitors were robots instead of overworked humans, and secondly, he wondered what the hell had happened. He saw a chance to get that question answered when one of the paint splatters started to move. Someone had been leaning against the wall, their outline blurred by the sprays of color coating every inch of their skin. The paint-battered student breathed heavily as Vell approached.

“What the hell happened here, man?”

“Witches,” the student gasped. “On the second floor. They’re using...some kind of spell...dozens of guns at once...we never stood a chance.”

“Okay, thanks for the heads up,” Vell said. He looked with some concern at the painted student, who looked to be in severe distress. “Are you hurt? Aren’t these guns supposed to be safe?”

“Yeah...they are...but one of them got me right in the nads, you know?”

“Oof. You, uh, you alright, man?”

“I’m good, yeah...Just got to take some deep breaths...I’ll be fine.”

“Cool. See you around, I guess.”

Vell turned away from the painted student and his injured nads, to head up the stairs. His footsteps trailed the colors splattered on the floor, creating mismatched rainbow footprints up the stairs. He stayed close to the wall and peeked around the corner, gun in hand.

At the far end of the rainbow colored halls, a trio of black-clad students -their midnight black garb unstained by even a droplet of paint- hovered two inches off the ground. The same magic that suspended the women in midair also suspended a cloud of dozens of guns that idly orbited their heads. Until Vell leaned over a bit too far, and every single one of the guns trained on him instantly. Vell ducked behind the corner again just in time for two dozen paintballs to sail through the air where his head had just been.

“Come out to play, little man,” the first witch said, her voice a droning monotone that trembled with resonant magical energy.

“He was quite tall, actually,” the second witch corrected, in an equally resonant monotone.

“Come out to play, tall man,” the first witch said.

“I don’t want to,” Vell said. “Listen, I get that you’re like, the bossfight for this building or whatever, but I just kind of want to grab my friend and leave.”

“A friend?”

“Yeah, she’s like one floor up, always wears red.” Vell said.

The witches shared a glance. Vell continued describing.

“Brown hair, really short?”

Still nothing.

“Really big boobs?”

“Harley?”

“Yeah, that’s her,” Vell said. “So can I just sneak by and grab her?”

The three witches floated closer together and shared their thoughts in secret ways, communicating via the psychosexual mental bond formed through intricate coven rituals. They also texted a few times.

“This is acceptable,” the first witch said. “We swear by the maiden, mother, and crone that you may pass to the upper floor unharmed.”

“And unpainted?”

“And unpainted,” the third witch confirmed. Vell kept his hand on his gun, but stepped out into the hall. While the floating guns of the witches three remained trained on him, they did not fire as he moved his way around the corner, into the next stairwell. He hurried up the stairs onto the next floor. He’d made it two steps into the hallway when he found himself staring down another set of paintball guns. Two mechanical turrets turned towards him and marked his chest with targeting lasers.

“Subject Vell Harlan identified,” the turret declared. “Protocol: Ballistic Annihilation disengaged. Welcome to the crib, homie.”

The two turrets disengaged their targeting lasers and returned to scanning the hallway for targets. Vell breathed a sigh of relief and walked between the two turrets that were flanking Harley’s doors.

“Hey Harley, it’s me,” Vell said, knocking on the door.

“You know the door code,” Harley said.

“Okay, just making sure you didn’t have another turret or something on the other side there,” Vell said. He punched in the code and let himself in. The usual cherry scent of Harley’s dorm was undercut by the smoky aroma of an active soldering iron. Harley was assembling the final pieces of a new paintball-focused combat body for Botley.

“What up, Harlan?” Harley said, without looking up from her soldering.

“The usual,” Vell said. “You almost done with that?”

“Close to it, yeah,” Harley said. She took one hand off her work and gestured to her desk drawer, across the room. “Bottles, get him the thingy.”

Harley’s robotic familiar saluted and shuffled his tiny robot body across the room to the drawer, prying it open with his little hands. He fell into the drawer and rummaged around a bit before triumphantly leaping out with a plastic revolver in his hands. Vell took the offered gun, while Botley dove back into the drawer to retrieve the second.

“A paintball revolver?”

“Yeah! I knew this paintball war thingy was happening eventually, and you’re crazy good with revolvers,” Harley said. “So I made them for you!”

“Thanks,” Vell said. He gave the pair of revolvers a quick spin and found them to be perfectly balanced. “These are really good.”

“Test them out before you compliment me,” Harley said. “I couldn’t hit for shit when I tried to test-fire them. Don’t know if it’s because I made them bad or because I suck at shooting, though.”

“I’ll wait a bit, don’t want to get paint all over your dorm,” Vell said. “And uh, hey, thanks again, I’m sincerely grateful, but if you spent all the time preparing these guns for the paintball war, couldn’t you have, you know, told me about the paintball war?”

“Honestly, Vell, at this point I’ve just started to like explaining things to you,” Harley said. “I’m also kind of scared of whatever demon or angry ghost or whatever has cursed you to never be able to read an instruction manual.”

“Well, at least you’re getting some enjoyment out of it,” Vell said.

“You’re almost done with all the school’s weird surprises anyway, you don’t have much more to worry about,” Harley said. She set her solder aside and took off the goggles she wore. “I’m all done. Come on, we’re going to meet up with Lee near the senior dorms, then get to the Ballball field.”

Harley plugged Botley’s head into the new body and fired up the drone’s system. The weaponized aerial platform hovered over her shoulder and aimed its paintball cannons in every direction.

“Good to go?”

“Good to go,” Harley said with a thumbs up. Vell took the lead as they headed back into the hallway. The auto-turrets briefly clicked back to life and pointed in their direction before identifying them as friends and going back to scanning the hallway.

“You going to shut those down?”

“Nah, might as well leave them to blast a few people,” Harley said. “Everybody’s competition, in the end.”

“Right. Uh, speaking of competition, there’s some witchy chicks downstairs,” Vell said. “They let me walk right past to get to you but I don’t know if they’re going to be chill going the other way.”

“Oh that was definitely a trap,” Harley said. “My turrets blew away a few of their coven earlier, they probably wanted to lure me out.”

“I see. Sorry.”

“Nah, I’d have to come out eventually,” Harley said. “This way I’ve got you and your weirdly superhuman yeehaw routine on my side.”

“I am very good at what I do,” Vell said, keeping a hand near his holstered paintball pistols. “I’ll take the lead.”

“Have I mentioned how hot it is when you’re doing the gunslinger thing?” Harley said. “That little bit of extra confidence just does wonders for your sex appeal.”

Harley bit her lip while Vell went red in the face.

“Uh...thanks, I guess, it’s uh-”

“And it’s gone,” Harley said. “Come on, it’s time for shooty things.”

The brief moment of flirtation had distracted Vell enough he’d almost walked right out of the stairwell, into full view of the floating witch trio. Vell assumed that the witches had sensed his approach and didn’t bother trying for an ambush.

“So, witches,” Vell said. “I don’t suppose it’ll be as easy going down as it was going up?’

“I usually find going down pretty easy,” Harley added. Vell glared at her. “Sorry. Couldn’t resist.”

“Unfortunately no, tall man,” the first witch said.

“Your innuendo-loving friend shot our sisters,” the third witch said.

“Paint must be repaid in paint,” the second witch concluded. Vell nodded and drew his guns -and tried to ignore Harley making eyes at him as he started doing his “gunslinger thing.”

“I’m going to give you one chance, ladies,” Vell said. “Let me pass.”

“We shall not,” the three witches said in unison.

“Well, I warned you,” Vell said. He cocked the hammers of both his paintball revolvers.

With an entirely unnecessary dramatic flourish, Vell spun out of cover, swinging low to the ground as he did so. The floating witches had to readjust their guns to aim at his lower center of mass, and those few milliseconds of readjustment were all Vell needed. The usual thunder of gunfire was replaced by the soft “piff” of paintball fire, but the shots rang out in the halls all the same. Three witches, three pulls of the trigger, and three paint-stained black dresses, all in less than a second. The witches hadn’t even finished aiming by the time the paintballs struck them out.

Vell stood, spun his two revolvers, and shoved them into the holsters.

“I did warn you,” he said. The disappointed witches sank to the floor and discarded their guns. The third witch turned to the second and put her hands on her hips.

“I said he seemed nice, we could just let him go, but no, ‘mortal men must know to respect the coven’,” she said. “Does that sound familiar, Linda?”

“This is embarrassing enough without you breaking the mystique, sister,” the apparent Linda said.

“Cry me a river. You’re paying to get this dress dry-cleaned.”

“What?”

“You insisted we wear the expensive matching dresses to the paintball war, you deal with the consequences!”

The three defeated witches sulked back to their respective dorms, bickering all the while. Vell reloaded the three spent chambers of his revolver while Harley finally came out of cover.

“Hey, remember how I was talking about your sex appeal?”

“Distinctly.”

“Well I just thought of a pretty good line but I want to know if I’m making you uncomfortable first,” Harley said. “I don’t want to make it weird.”

“I know what to expect from you,” Vell said. “Go ahead.”

“I’m serious about this gunslinger thing, Vell, like, when you cock those guns I just want you to cock me, right?”

Harley’s face split into a wide grin that faded as Vell stared blankly at her.

“Not that good, huh?”

“Eh, six out of ten,” Vell said. “It has potential, but the execution needs work.”

“I’ll workshop it,” Harley sighed. “Come on, let’s go find Lee.”