“Number twelve, step forward.” Calvin said.

In the distance, the Kurawe lookalike with the blindfold stepped forward, his feet crossing the line at the edge of arena that marked one hundred feet distance.

One of the Guys.

Calvin shuddered as his bones shifted and his flesh ballooned outward, growing in height and girth, until was the size and shape of the late cult leader. He turned and ran back to Murak, dressed in Kurawe’s clothes stolen from the cult leader’s mansion.

“What do you think?” he asked, running his hands down his body sensually, rubbing his corpulent body.

“Well, I can honestly say that’s disturbing,” Murak said. “You got it perfect. Or close enough to perfect.”

“Excellent,” Calvin said, sitting across from the banker. The chair was tiny, like a child’s set of furniture and Calvin found himself balanced precariously, trying to stay seated next to them.

“Not a fan,” Kala said, leaning away from Calvin’s new bulk.

“I’ve seen disguise abilities before.” Murak said. “They’re instantaneous. That was not instantaneous.”

“True.” Calvin said, glancing around the noisy arena. Thousands of knick knacks were tearing apart the royal stands and modifying the arena itself to alter the contents of the tournament.

Calvin dug the arena’s blueprints out from under the pile of documents that Murak was sorting through. Signing the city over to Calvin took time.

He laid them flat on his side of the table, then overlaid the map of the city.

“The aqueduct runs directly under the arena. Right around here.” Calvin said, marking the spot gently with a sharpened piece of charcoal. “ And the sewer is here…” He marked another spot.

“And the royal stands are…here. Calvin groaned as he marked a spot as far away from his two favorite methods of egress as possible, rubbing his temple. They wouldn’t be able to drop the royal family straight into the sewers.

Maybe a slide…

“What’s under the royal stands?” Calvin asked aloud, shuffling through the next set of blueprints.

“The contestant rest area.” Kala said, passing him the basement level blueprint and pointing.

“They don’t need all that space, do they?” Calvin asked, shading in about half of the area, then made a note on the side. *35 degree track. Track…

“What’s the height of the ceiling?”

“Twelve feet.” Kala said, pointing to a side view. “In the plans, anyway.”

“We’re going to need to double check. What the plan says and what happened isn’t always the same.

“In my experience, it’s never the same,” Murak said idly, stamping another document with a thump. He glanced up and spotted their stunned expressions.

“I’m eighty two.” He said patronizingly. “I wasn’t rich and powerful my entire life. I worked on plumbing a time or two.”

“Hmm…” Calvin frowned as he went over the blueprint. “The most important thing here is that the kidnapping goes off without a hitch. Fewest possible points of failure.

Exactly, we’re not making a Rube Goldburg device.

I don’t know what that is, Calvin thought as he glanced up at the royal stands the knick-knacks were industriously cutting away from the main building. Unfortunately the stands themselves were part of a section of build that was never intended to be free floating, so they weren’t contiguous.

I need contiguous.

Calvin pulled out the blank sheet of paper and began sketching the plan for the kidnapping vehicle. The most important thing was making sure the shrinking effect worked the way he thought it did, and that the shrinking happened to the exact measure that he needed.

That meant math.

But math based on the real world is seldom perfect, Calvin thought glancing back up at the arena as he sketched the mechanism with a preset…

No, not preset. Put a Knick-knack in charge of the shrinking. Calvin circled a little hole in the floor beside the tightening screw and made sure it had a clear line of sight to the wheels under the platform. A knick-knack could aim for the estimated shrinkage, then adjust as necessary to make sure the wheels landed properly.

He filled in a little straight-lined man holding onto a crank.

Drafting has reached level 5! 25% correction.

+1 intuition

Please choose an Ability or Mutation.

Foreman: Drafting corrections apply to those building on your behalf.

Visualization: superimpose a mental image on the real world to aid in drafting. Only visible to the user.

Steady hands: Correction applies to effective Kinesthetics level.

Idiot-Proofing: Blueprints drawn by the user apply the user’s correction to others trying to understand and remember them.

^ We can finally compete in the race against nature's ability to create a better idiot.

Mutations

Igor Brain: Grow a specialized sub-brain that can aid in the design and recall of complicated structures/processes.

^yes, Master!

^ Slight chance of becoming an eldritch abomination. You know, assuming you weren’t already slowly becoming an undead as your body slides inevitably toward death. Cuz who doesn’t wanna be an eldritch abomination, amiright?

Never go without: User’s appendages may be transformed into Pencils at will. Extreme amounts of writing may cause damage to the user’s body.

^*shrug* Why not?

Calvin scanned the options. None of them immediately jumped out at him.

At least you’ve got a 25% sharper pencil.

Okay, let’s sort through these. Foreman is out because Knick-knacks don’t need any kind of boost. They are already inhumanly good at what they do. Steady hands is redundant because I plan on getting a huge amount of Kinesthetics in the next couple days.

Idiot proofing is…well, good for giving other people my designs, but I don’t plan on doing much of that in the immediate future.

Igor Brain…

Calvin was far more cautious about mutations since The Incident. He didn’t think he’d fare so well if there was a conflict Elliot hadn’t predicted. His brain couldn’t slough off as easily as his eyes.

Perhaps it’s a bit too on the nose, but I liked being the only one in residence in my skull. I don’t need another wisecracking asshole in here.

Was that directed at me?

So that leaves Visualization.

Not an exciting power, but Calvin could see himself using it, and using it well.

I choose visualization.

Cal closed his eyes as the knowledge tingled its way into his mind.

Hey, what about the pencil one? You don’t want to be Pencil Man?

No.

Calvin opened his eyes.

Let’s try the suit of armor trick again.

Visualize was very versatile, allowing him to picture the suit of armor as if it were standing in front of him, every little piece apparent to his eyes. Even the insides. It was bizzare, but if Calvin shifted his focus, the part of the armor blocking his side would become somewhat transparent, allowing him to see the back of the piece, along with all the tiny details of the armor.

There were a few spots that weren’t perfectly imagined, rivets just a tiny bit oblong that might make the armor squeak as it moved. They were a breeze to change, resulting in a flawless set of armor standing in front of him, held up by sheer balance.

Calvin touched the Abyssal Steel marble and the leather of his belt. At this point it was like he was a child, filling in a draw by numbers book.

It was laughably easy.

Mass Multi Shaping.

16/32 Bent remaining.

Murak flinched as four suits of Abyssal steel armor appeared, fully formed to the side of their table, balancing for a moment before they toppled to the ground.

Yeah, that works.

It had added a couple seconds to the casting time to fill in all those tiny details, but Calvin was sure he could bring that number down. And in a situation where accuracy was more valuable than speed, being able to literally visualize the creation as he was making it was a damn good advantage.

I like this, Calvin thought, steepling his fat sausage fingers together and trying not to break his chair as he studied the armor lying on the sand of the arena.

Behind them, he heard the sound of someone walking through the sand, along with the feeling of Polluq’s form, hand resting on the pommel of his shortsword.

He stopped for a moment, studying Calvin’s huge form before addressing Murak and Kala.

“It seems as if the body double turned out well enough, where’s the little shit?”

“That’d be me,” Calvin replied with a very close approximation of Kurawe’s voice.

“Disguise Ability?” Pulluq asked, eyes narrowing. “Does it stand up to magical scrutiny?”

“Sure does.”

“You want me to dispose of the templates?” he asked pointing a thumb at the men sweating bullets with their eye covered.

“..no? Just keep them quiet until after the tournament. It doesn’t require killing them.”

Polluq seemed a little disappointed.

How the hell did Kurawe keep this guy on a leash? Oh right, he threw people in a hole for fun. Nevermind.

“Well, we’ve got everything set up, including the announcement of the changes to the games, along with your execution at the conclusion. Was there anything else?”

“I need this set of rules given to the contestants.” Calvin said, passing him his List of Demands.

Polluq scanned it, frowning deeply before looking up at Calvin with a scowl. “What on Marconen is this shit?”

“Shits and giggles.” Calvin said.

There was a massive cracking noise as the last section of the royal stands came loose from the rest of the glass structure. It immediately began to shift, flipping over high above their heads as knick-knacks used their own bodies as bracing for the fragile structure while they welded support struts to the bottom.

“How much do you think that weighs?” Calvin asked, watching the monolithic chunk of floor shifting out of the way.

Calvinian summoning

15/32 Bent remaining.

14/32 Bent remaining.

13/32 Bent remaining.

12/32 Bent remaining.

11/32 Bent remaining.

Calvin shook his tent-like sleeves out of the way and held out his hands as a gout of green smoke billowed out of his hands, resolving into a thousand more Knick-knacks, who climbed up the side of the arena and dove into the area beneath the seat-filled platform.

They were the ones responsible for working on the track.

“Nadia, I need a pick-me-up.” She wasn’t able to read his mind unless he directly tried to influence the summon with his will, so verbal commands worked better, since she could see and hear everything he did.

12/32 Bent remaining.

13/32 Bent remaining.

14/32 Bent remaining.

…

33/32 Bent remaining.

“That’s enough.”

Back to work. Minimal changes for maximum distance.

***Nadia***

Nadia’s prey gasped for air as she pulled her lips away from theirs.

“Please,” the young woman gasped, her furious heartbeat showing in the hollow of her neck. The uleisan tart was sprawled backward in the thick pillows of the brothel, barely able to remember her name.

“Sorry, that’s all I can do for now,” Nadia said sweetly as she laid next to her, fixing the gullible rube’s hair as the girl’s eyelids fluttered in between gasps of pleasure.

“Did I have to be around for this?” Ryan asked, shifting in his seat uncomfortably.

“No, that was just bad timing on your part,” Nadia said, turning her gaze back to the simpleton. She levered herself off the bed and went over to the nearby desk with a letter on it. She handed it to him. “You’re going to deliver this to a professor named Seymour.”

“Why don’t you do it?” the petulant sociopath asked.

“Because the strings attached to me aren’t my own,” Nadia said, putting her face uncomfortably close to her puppet’s.

“The strings attached to you, though…” She said, tapping him on the chest with her finger. Those are mine. All you have to do is deliver the letter, and I’ll reward you with a small fortune I squirreled away earlier.”

“How will you know I’ve delivered it?” Ryan asked.

“Seymour will get into contact with me. When that happens…” Nadia smiled brightly. “You’re paid.”

Ryan pursed his lips, looking at the envelope. “I can do that.”

***Baroke***

Matthias was right. Damn.

It was confusing as the Mist, because from what Ella told him, Calvin was feeling mischievous, not about to be executed. There was something going on.

They gathered in the contestant’s lobby on the morning of the tournament, gawking at the changes made to the room.

The ceiling was now sloped downward at a thirty-five degree angle, leading almost a third of the room to be entirely unusable except for a few souls taking naps under the low section of the ceiling, despite the water dripping onto them.

The organizer of the tournament walked in the door, looking down at his clipboard and clearing his throat.

“Alright, a lot has changed since yesterday, as you can see. Kurawe has decided to add naval battles to the menu along with team battles and games of skill.”

Baroke blinked. What is going on? The other fighters looked similarly confused.

“For the first event, we’ll take all sixteen of you and assign a unit of twelve infantrymen to each, and the point of the game will be to sink the other team’s ships.”

“This isn’t what I signed up for! I can’t even swim!” one of the fighters said, to the general assent of others.

“Then I suggest not getting your ship sunk,” the bald man said, cocking a brow. “You all signed a waiver that not only acknowledged the risk of death, but also said you would comply with whatever changes the organizer of the event deems necessary. He deems this necessary.”

“Son of a bitch.” The guy who couldn’t swim said.

Baroke wasn’t the best swimmer either, his density was pretty high.

“there will be six other events over the course of the day, and the one who places highest in the average of all the events will be the champion. With all the associated benefits…Including…”

The organizer looked up and scanned their faces. “The right to execute The Wasp, the monster who killed the Third Division.”

A hushed murmur floated over the crowd as Baroke’s skin crawled.

“The loser of each event will be disqualified from winning the prize and removed from the arena until the end of the tournament.”

“We don’t even get to watch?” one of the men asked.

“Nope. Moving on..”

Baroke tuned out as his mind raced. If he didn’t win, he’d be kicked out of the arena until after Calvin had been executed! What kind of guarshit was that? That ruined everything!

Baroke’s plan to coast along after forfeiting the first round was thrown out the window. He had to double down and beat everyone here to get close enough to rescue Calvin. He or Ella had to make it to the end. They had to win.

“Oh, I almost forgot.” The organizer said, reaching into the satchel on his side. He pulled out a tiny scrap of leather thong, connected to two extra tall platform high heels made of ivory, and a bright pink puff of stiff cloth.

“Any contestant over the height of six foot eight is required to wear these,” He said. “The organizer said that, and I quote, ‘our tallest men and women are a gift from the gods and should really pop on the battlefield.’ End quote.”

Heads started to turn towards Baroke, the only one who was obviously above that height threshold.

I have to do it, Baroke thought, his heart hammering in his chest. I have to save him.

“Oh, and there’s body oil in here for anyone above two hundred and forty pounds. The producer says it’ll help show off your muscles or curves, what have you.” The burly man said, pulling out a canister full of congealed oil. Baroke could make out short, curly hairs clinging to the side of the can.

I can swallow this humiliation. I have to –

“Oh.” Baroke said, realization slamming him between the eyes. “OOOH,”

“What is it?” Ella asked, glancing over at him.

“Calvin’s running the damned tournament. He’s fine. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

“Rewards for first and second place have been changed to include a suit of armor made of a magical metal never seen before on this world, and a quiver full of magical arrows made of the same stuff. Not only can they penetrate nearly anything, but the quiver can fit in the palm of your hand.

Hmmm….