Sliding to a perfect stop behind the cop car, I felt the effects of one of my two [Graced Maneuver]s come to a swift end. My legs felt like they'd turned to jelly in an instant, but that wasn't important. What mattered was that I was here, and hadn't been shot.

Not getting shot was a high priority for me.

It had probably been a high priority for officer Daniels here, too. But bad luck, and a pissed off teenage edgelord with an assault rifle, had ruined his day pretty badly. The squad car was sideways across the road in front of the Muletown High School, and Daniels was currently slumped against the front tire, bleeding out. About three hundred feet back, the paramedics waited, held back by police who hadn't secured the area against the gang of shitheads who thought that today would be just the perfect fucking time to do a school shooting.

I'm sure that someone had, by now, noticed me sprinting across open ground, vaulting a small stone wall, and sliding into place behind the car. But what mattered was that no one who had noticed me was currently shooting at me. I unfolded my hands in front of me, the gesture opening up the ghostly interface of my Hand.

Four cards left. I'd not really stockpiled properly today; four was far away from my max hand size of twelve, and twelve would have been so much more fucking useful right now. But there wasn't time to dwell on that. Because one of those four *was* useful. If not for myself, than for Daniels here.

Reaching out with one hand, I seized the spectral card between my pointer and middle finger. Then I flicked it out into reality.

Daniels was staring at me with pained eyes. Maybe he wanted to ask what the fuck I was doing, maybe he thought I was here to taunt or execute him; I wasn't *that* old, maybe I looked like a high schooler to someone who had bullets in them. Somehow, I expect that the absolute last thing he expected was to be hit by literal magic. [Triage And Stabilize] hit him like a fucking truck, if that truck were made of healing instead of... truck. He gasped in a wet, shuddering breath of air as a few warped bullets clattered to the ground in front of him, suddenly no longer inside his lungs.

It wouldn't replenish his blood, or do more than the basics really, but he was guaranteed to live for minimum half an hour; unless those worthless curs in the school took another shot at him before then. That’s what the card did - not heal, specifically, but guarantee thirty minutes of continued life.

I grimaced as the card's cost drained from one of my pools. Twelve Compassion down, only two left. And *that* was a resource I wasn't going to be refreshing anytime soon. Not in this situation, anyway. Too angry.

"Hey, I'm just gonna borrow this. Stay here, I'll be right back." I patted Daniels on the shoulder as I unclipped the taser from his belt. I could have taken the gun, but... well, I'm not that kinda person, honestly. Guns are for people without magical card games backing them up.

Daniels reached out weakly for me, and I couldn't tell if it was to thank me or try to stop me, but whichever it was, he didn't get the chance before I was gone again.

There were shouts from the police line behind me as I casually strolled around the side parking lot of the high school, but I ignored them. Instead, I scanned the windows of the building ahead of me as I looped around the side, toward the doors that opened out to the football field. No movement; but that made sense. The group of monsters in the building were probably staying away from the windows. Still, not bad news; that let me walk right up to the doors, pop one of them four big glass barriers open, and walk right into the school.

I was instantly confronted by the dumbass they'd left to guard this entrance.

It's amazing how, just over a decade out of high school, I look back on what seemed like the pinnacle of my life and realize that it wasn't that big of a deal. It's also amazing how all high schoolers - people who looked so intimidating to me then - all look like dumb kids now. This dumb kid was just over five feet, sandy hair, kind of a round face, and holding an AR-15 leveled at me in shaky hands.

Fucker didn't even tell me to freeze or anything before he pulled the trigger.

And that was when [Under Cover Of Fortune] kicked in. I'd had it active for a while, it being one of the cards I preferred to fire off before leaving the house every day, if I could. It had a six hour active time, which was still running, and it was fantastic for a lot of things. But in this scenario; one specific thing.

Making guns jam.

I caught sight of the marker for the card on my minimized display going up in a puff of blue flame as the kid in front of me gave a weird look at his gun. Almost like he was confused at its betrayal. That look didn't last long, as I tazed him a second later, causing him to howl in pain and collapse to the floor in a series of convulsions.

Fun fact about tasers! They don't actually incapacitate by disabling muscles or stunning the brain or anything, like movies and bad cop shows tell you. They incapacitate people through *pain*. I'd been tased once before as part of a police training program, since I'd been the idiot to volunteer for it, and let me tell you, nothing quite compares to feeling like half your muscles are trying to forcibly detach themselves off of your skeleton.

I wasn't feeling that bad about nailing this kid with it though. In my mind, there was a certain line that humans could cross in our lives that flipped the designation from 'person' to 'monster', and bringing a bunch of guns to school to hunt your classmates for sport was way past that moral event horizon. It may have been a bit vindictive, but I grinned as I clicked the taser a second longer than it really needed to go. It also had the side effect of adding two points to my spite pool, which I always had a hard time increasing, and never actually needed that much.

Crouching next to the still twitching idiot, I pulled the gun away, and also took the pistol sticking out of his pants, sans-holster. Fucking moron. Even I was getting tired of how stupid these guys were, and that was saying something when their stupidity was my survival. Then I half-stood, grabbed him under his arms, and started dragging.

Now, I wasn't the strongest hitter around or anything, but this kid was half my size, no longer laden down with firearms, and had completely lost the energy to resist. So it wasn't hard to back out the doors before anyone came to investigate, haul him across the side parking lot, and dump him in front of the school in plain view of the police there. I also tossed the guns onto the grass some distance away. I was taking full advantage of the last few minutes on the active timer of [Aura of Unconcern], which itself took full advantage of my Ennui pool to the tune of four points. I wouldn't miss those points, for once. But regardless, it kept anyone from freaking out, and kept the police from going so far as to shoot or stop me as I turned and walked back toward the door.

One down, three to go.

On the way back to the back door, I noted that my draw timer had hit zero, and made the motion to open up my Hand again. Hands in fists, thumbs pressed together, pull them apart to unfurl my remaining cards. Now, second gesture, as I walked. Two fingers out to the side, thumb slightly down, like you're grabbing something off a stack. Pull the hand back toward myself, loop the fingers around to see what I drew.

[The Eight Glamours of the Forbidden Library]

Well fuck. That was probably the least useful card I owned.

No, really. Overlong name aside, its actual effect was negligible. It was a modal card, that gave a fairly decent list of illusions as options, but only in regards to books currently in libraries. Granted, there was a library in this place, but the odds that this was going to come in handy were almost nothing.

So, plan A. Clip the second cartridge into the taser, and go prowling around to see if I could find another asshole.

As I stalked through the cafeteria toward the back stairs, I took the opportunity to snag a handful of fries off a table. Still warm, too, which was a blessing. I was hungry enough to steal abandoned lunchroom food, but high school cafeteria french fries had a shelf life measured in seconds. And I wasn't that desperate. Honestly, I was mostly just trying to calm my nerves as I did something monumentally stupid.

It's about now that I should tell you that I'm not a hero. I didn't make a habit of intervening in crisis situations. It just sort of... played out this way. Honestly, since I'd picked up that Card a couple weeks back, things like this had been happening more and more. Situations, like, capital-S Situations, kept popping up in my life. Sometimes, I just let them go. But sometimes.

Well, sometimes, a bunch of kids shot a police officer, rounded up a bunch of their classmates that hadn't gotten out of the school already, and started making demands. In the building next to my house. On my day off.

But really, I didn't have the tools to be a hero. Not yet, anyway. I had a couple points of Ennui left to burn on [Aura of Unconcern] in its last minutes, which would probably get me close enough to shock another one of the thugs. I had one of my three copies of [Fact Finder], which let me glean random information on 'target subject', according to the card. And which only worked on legal, social, or business subjects. And I had a classic [Blast]. I paused in looking over my hand with that one.

I had never used [Blast] in a situation like this. I'd tried it once at the old rock quarry, and made a pretty nice sized crater in the rock ground. That was absolutely something I didn't want to use on a person.

That said, as I approached the set of classrooms where I was pretty sure the other goons were keeping their hostages, I did get an idea.

Unfold my hand, grab the card. Flick it into the world. Select a target with a combination of my eyes, pointing fingers, and a little mental nudge. And then, feel the cost drain from my resource pools - two points of Determination in this case.

Then watch the printer in the computer lab down the hall turn into a piece of modern art.

The noise of the detonation was impressive, at best, and ear-damaging at worst. A screech of metal and the crunch of plastic, combined with a thin concussive *whoom* that shook my heart in my chest. And a second later, shouts from inside one of the enclosed rooms. Boy, they sounded angry. I could hear one guy, probably their alpha, screaming in a cracking voice to go check it out, and I grinned as my play tumbled into action.

The door swung open with a thump against the brick wall, and a couple of kids who probably though they looked tactical as fuck moving with their rifles up came out. I caught a glimpse of them from behind the corner I was leaning against, as they looked around, saw that the ruin I'd left in the computer lab, and went over to check it out as cautiously as two adrenaline-hyped teenagers could.

I ignored them, casually strolled over to the door they'd come out of, and walked into the room.

The desks in the classroom had been shoved to the side, making room for the huddle of about forty other students and a few teachers to be packed into sitting positions on the floor. Most of them looking abjectly terrified, and a few of them stealing glances at the open door. I wished fewer of them had, since that started draining Ennui through the lens of [Aura of Unconcern] as the card deflected their attention. And then, with one larger burst of drain, I ran out entirely. But that last bit was because their fearless leader had laid eyes on me, and had decided for just a little too long that I wasn't important enough to shoot.

And then I hit him with the taser.

Man it was satisfying watching this guy twitch on the ground. The strangled yell of pain, though, was going to bring the other two back running, so I was strapped for time. Putting on my best game face and giving the hostages a winning smile, I jogged over and grabbed the shotgun, then moved to right beside the open door.

It took maybe thirty seconds for the other two shooters to come bumbling back through the door, running in still with their guns up and displaying absolutely no trigger discipline. They started yelling over each other, swearing and threatening the hostages who were still trying to come to grips with the fact that I'd just strolled in here and wrecked one of their captors. Neither of them noticed me yet.

So, as I watched the timer count down the last few seconds on [Aura of Unconcern], and saw that icon go up in a puff of blue flame, I cleared my throat. Loudly. "Gentlemen." I loudly spoke. "Weapons down please."

Both of them spun to look at me. One of them screamed as he did so, dropping his gun and throwing his hands in the air. This actually made it a lot easier to casually level the shotgun at the other one, and remind him, "Drop iiit. Drop it. Good." I nodded at him as he set his weapon down.

This had been easier than expected! For my first time dealing with people who actually had weapons and may have tried to shoot me, I feel like it had gone pretty well!

After I'd gotten a couple of the teachers to secure the firearms, I instructed the two shooters to pick up their still stunned friend, and had them do the heavy lifting this time. Considering that they weren't that well muscled, and we had to go down stairs, I was willing to bet the guy was gonna wake up with a hell of a headache. In jail, hopefully.

After getting them downstairs, I handed off my shotgun to the teacher who had followed me. She had told me that her name was Mrs. Haggstrom, and she taught history, but from the way the gun looked more comfortable in her hands than it ever would in mine, I got the impression that this sixty-something woman was mostly here because she was in witness protection after turning on her old mob buddies. While it would have been fun to see how this played out, I didn't really want to deal with the police asking pointed questions about what the fuck I was doing.

So, the back door for me. And then across a field, and over a fence, and down a side road to the park that bordered my apartment complex. I didn't need a Card to keep attention off me this time; pretty much everyone was focused on the students getting out of there before anything horrible had happened. I honestly hadn't checked for bodies inside; not that I'd be able to do anything about them, but maybe I should have looked at least.

I had mostly been wanting to resolve the situation as fast as possible, and then take my leave. Maybe it was selfish, but I just... didn't want to bother with the rest of it. Talking to people, explaining what happened, especially explaining *how* it happened. I'd just sorta gotten caught up in trying to help, and now, bailing out seemed like the fastest way to end my involvement.

Getting back into my apartment, throwing my keys and wallet onto the counter, I slumped down onto my couch. Smooth leather conforming to my sweaty skin as I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding.

I'd done it. There'd been a problem, a big one, and I'd solved it. Mostly because of the Cards I'd been granted by fate and chance, but also with my own actions. Power was useless if you didn't use it.

Speaking of power.

I opened my hands up, bringing up the full display. And then, a sort of weird pulling motion to open up the Tasks menu, now with a few of the handful of random daily optional mini-quests shining in a gold color. So, a couple of quick hand-clicks later, palm outward and fingers up, and I had my reward.

(Protector) - End a violent confrontation that threatens someone else.

(Last Chance) - Save a life when you are the only option left.

(Improvisationist) - Use a destructive-type Card for a strength 3+ effect, without harming anyone.

(Show Off) - Affect more than 10 people with one Card.

Four rewards poured into my ghostly apparatus while I laughed at the irony of (Show Off) probably being triggered off of [Aura of Unconcern]. Most of the tasks could be done repeatedly, though on longer and longer cooldown timers. And there were always more of them rotating in and out, too many to keep up with. Always ten options, ten ‘sidequests’, every time I checked, though. I could, if I wanted to, tag up to two of them that wouldn’t rotate out until I’d completed them, but that was risky, if I didn’t know when or if I’d be able to finish them.

For now, though... (Show Off) had gotten me two copies of a card called [Archive Moment]. That was gonna be one of the weeeeeird ones, I could already tell. (Improvisationist) appeared to have given me a card called [Adjust]. That was hopeful; it had so far seemed like the simplest names had the most flexible effects. Or, well, one very strong effect that could be applied in a lot of ways. The Task of (Last Chance) had been bordered in purple when it had shown up a couple days ago, and I figured that meant it was rare in some way, but the reward didn’t instantly reflect that. The card it handed me was simply called [Growth Spurt], and probably did something nuts. I’d check out its actual text in a minute. Because then, finally, (Protector) earned me a new deck.

, it was called. Ah, there's the new option. Swap decks, huh? So, I can change out what my draw pool is, eh? Hm. Kind of offended that my current, main, and only deck is labeled as . Looks like it only accepts cards that use Determination, and Spite. Maybe more, if I unlocked new cards in the future, but for now, that was maybe twenty percent of the Cards I owned. Also, only a max size of ten Cards, compared to my base of twenty five. *But*, for that limitation, it drew once every five minutes, instead of every half hour. Lower max hand size, though. And the resource pool growth rate was pitiful. So, this was really meant to be what I swapped to when I wanted to get into a strife situation, eh? Not that I really planned on getting into more fights, though maybe destiny had different plans for me.

I'd find a way to make use of it. I'd adapt. I always did. I was a smart girl, after all.

No matter what was in the cards.

…

Shut up, I’m hilarious.