Victoria glumly headed to her much-hated next class, physical education. She found herself huddling in on herself. She stopped and took a few deep breaths. “I can do this I beat team bitch slap yesterday I can do it again.” Because as she knew Friday was all too likely to be basketball, another game of dodge ball or something else that her teacher could sit on her large butt and blow the whistle at the students for.

However, when she turned the corner that would take her to the locker rooms she caught sight of Miss Livingston talking with the rotund coach. She ducked to the side of the hall cursing herself for her own stupidity. She should never have baited the woman by letting her know she could feel the magic around herself. “What do I do?” She said to herself rhetorically. “She eyed the woman. “ I really don’t have enough information.” Taking a deep breath she tried to center herself with a meditation technique she had learned from elementary school.

She realized that she actually had two goals to accomplish in class. The first was to get the home addresses of the girl that might be infected with the parasites so that she could save the cheerleaders. The second objective was to get more information about whatever was happening to her. Mind clear she advanced on the classroom.

“I hope one of the girls is there.” She muttered to herself as she got the mental picture of herself being arrested hauled out of the school and being the first thing her father saw as he woke up in the hospital. “Thanks, Caroline,” she muttered as she got into the locker room, where she expected to see her friend.

She focused and brought up her quest that she had received the day before.

Save the cheerleaders: One or more of your cheerleaders appears to have been infected.

You must find a way to stop the spread of insects that has a grip on their lives.

Time is of the essence when the Ensek is at hand..

She swallowed in panic. She didn’t remember the rest of the details from her quest from the day before. Before she could get into the locker room, however. “Leighton over here.” She heard the coach bellowed. Wincing she looked around to the rest of the class and she spotted her teacher and Miss Livingston. Mrs. Morganstern was waving her over to the bleachers. “We had an unfortunate incident yesterday.” She said rocking back on her heels. Mrs. Morganstern was a short plump woman who it was said could to a minute mile if you gave her a twenty-minute head start. Victoria felt the scrutiny of the purported Miss Livingston and found her shoulders hunching in. She took a deep breath and looked at the woman then forced herself to walk over to the bleachers and join her peers. She noted that the four of the six cheerleaders from the day before were absent. She frowned in thought and realized that the only ones present had the bugs removed from their necks.

Their teacher practically growled at the students. “Behave, The grad student has some questions for you all and its anonymous. So I expect you to answer honestly. Victoria you pass out the questionnaires.” She said waving a sheaf of papers in front of her. The teenager acted meek and complied. As she approached though she saw the woman eyed her suspiciously.

She waited until Victoria was near. “We will talk after this.” She stated as if it was already a forgone conclusion. The teenager distributed the questionnaire as requested then sat to do her own evaluation;

Has anyone ever called you names? Yes/No

Has anyone ever physically assaulted you? Yes/No

Are you afraid to tell an adult about a situation in your life? Yes/No

Have you been threatened in any way? Yes/No

Victoria overheard Ryoka mutter to Cora. “Jeeze it's like they never went to high school.” The redhead nodded imperceptibly in agreement.

“Karen did worse than this in a single day,” Cora muttered.

Victoria found the conversation odd but interesting, apparently, things were not what they seemed with the cheerleaders, all one cohesive group. Victoria wondered if that was the influence of Karen and maybe a hive mind? Sighing she put the completed sheet down and dug out her biology textbook and started looking through the index for insects. After a few minutes, she felt a presence behind her and turning she found the grad student standing there. “If you don’t mind I have a class to study for.”

“I have a lot of questions and well I need answers. You seem to be my only source.” The woman cocked her head at the student. “Talk to me.” She said forcefully.

Mental Domination resisted!

Victoria groaned and stretched. “Fine, but I don’t know how I can help you.” She said and hated how she sounded like a moody teenager. “Where to?”

“Over there on the other bleachers.” Victoria eyed the woman and wondered what was going on. She looked professional like she actually was a grad student. Her dress was of good material but it was bland as if it was a prop designed to blend into the background. She had brown hair brown eyes and all around looked like a nobody. Or the thought occurred to her was trying to look like something she wasn’t. The teenager sat down her back to the wall and sat in a way that allowed her to see the rest of the room. “You seem to be on guard. Can I ask why?”

The teen looked askance at the woman. “Your truth for my truth okay?” Victoria said.

“That’s a very formal way of phrasing it.” The woman said taken aback.

“No offense, but I’ve had a really bad week.” She said looking at her hands. “I get the feeling my weekend isn’t going to get much better.”

“That may depend on what you tell me here. First, who is your family?” she asked with a directed gaze.

“That's a great question.” The teenager said biting her lip. “Two mornings ago I’d have told you I was Rose and David Leighton's oldest daughter. Fun isn’t it, that's both the truth and a lie.”

“What?” The grad student asked confused her eyes narrowed as she looked at the girl like a bug under a microscope.

“We have a video of my birth live birth.” She said looking at the woman. “Same for my brother. We usually watch it on our birthdays. The video, it's only about ten minutes long and yeah it's kind of cool seeing yourself being born. Hearing your mother and father's voices as they welcome you into the world.” She could hear the tears starting to come into her voice. She stopped and blinked back the incipient tears before they could fall. “Two days ago I get a message floating in front of my face.”

“A message? What happened two days ago?” She asked wishing she had access to the girl's school file. “A blue box?” She asked to clarify.

Mental Domination resisted!

“Yeah, a freaky blue box hovering right in front of my face. Two days ago was my seventeenth birthday. It showed up on what I guess was the exact second that I was born.” She stated blandly. “Yay me. Woohoo.” She said in a sarcastic tone as she was swirling her right pointer finger in the air. She sniffed back more incipient tears.

“And what did the message say?” Miss Livingston was massaging her ring finger that was missing the ring.

Victoria gave her a half-hearted smile. “Happy 17th birthday! You have 24 hours to complete set up and registration or the system will initialize with default settings. Again Happy birthday! Do you wish to enter Set up?”

“Oh, shit. And your parents never told you you were a hunter?” She got a glare from the teenager.

“My parents would have told me if they knew.” She said with the confidence of a teenager. “My father would have told me. He’s in the hospital and been in some kind of coma for the past week and a half.” She found her voice was starting to rise. She stopped speaking for a bit then continued. “I saw the library. I asked about my parents. It said my biological parents had been great hunters.” She said quietly. “Do you understand what it was telling me?”

“No, actually I don’t.” She replied

Mental Domination resisted!

Victoria saw the notifications again but she continued to speak. She thought she needed this woman to understand she laughed bitterly. “I’m willing to talk to you. You don’t have to keep trying to spell me.”

“Oh, oh shit.” She reached up and stroked her chin.

“So guess what you have me a snot-nosed teenager with no clue what she's doing. And I have a quest to save the cheerleaders.” At those words, she deflated. “And I don’t even have the faintest idea on how to do that.”

“Save the cheerleaders? Are there any details on it?” The woman asked.

Victoria nodded then looked up the quest in her log and repeated it word for word.

“The Ensek? That is so not good.” The brown-haired woman said in thought.

“Why? Remember I know nothing here.” The teen grumped.

The woman paused for thought. “I guess you deserve to know what you’ve gotten yourself into. The Ensek is a race of sentient insects but they use humans to breed. A female puts a larva on a host and it burrows into their neck eventually it will consume the host.”

Victoria nodded her understanding. “While the larvae are on the host burrowing into the host's nervous system it acts like a symbiont but its really more of a parasite. It takes over and has access to the host's memories and follows the commands of its parent. In centuries past the Ensek would take over an entire village and would have to be destroyed utterly.”

Victoria saw a notification blinking that hadn’t been there previously.

Quest completed; Save the cheerleaders.

You have passed on the task to an older and “wiser” head. Sandra Beckett may ask

your assistance in saving the cheerleaders.

Wisdom +1: it takes a wise head to know when they are out of their element.

+500 XP

“What just happened?” The woman asked as she saw a smile cross the teenager's face.

“I just got a notification that you were going to handle the rest of the quest. Mrs. Beckett.” Victoria said with a smile.

“Oh boy!” The woman sighed.

“How do you like my truth Mrs. Beckett?” The teenager said with a wane smile.

“Please call me Sunny.” The woman took a few minutes to compose herself. “You don’t even know anything of what you’ve gotten yourself into do you?”

Victoria laughed. “No, I don’t have a clue. Last week all I wanted was to be asked out to the formal dance with a guy I’ve wanted forever.”

“There's spells for that,” Sunny said blandly. The teenager glared at the older woman who then chuckled at the girl's response.

“Somehow, I do not think it would be the same. If the man only asked me out because I commanded him too. The teen hotly retorted. Then took a deep breath, The older woman watched the girl with interest. She was surprisingly stable and down to earth for one so young.

“You seem to be adapting to this pretty well.” She replied blandly.

“I’m not. I know I’m not. Maybe it's seeing the ghosts downtown or getting knife fighting lessons from a dead hero.” She said looking up at the woman. “I’m dealing with this but when I get things over I’ve decided I will let myself find a quiet place and lose it for a few days.” The teen sighed

“Or you could do like others,” Saundra said sadly. “You wouldn’t be the first who decided to give up your magic.”

“Give it up?” Victoria said. Then paused for thought then looked the woman in the eyes in silent entreaty.

“Magic can’t live in an unwilling heart.” The older woman said. “But you need to know the lay of the land.”

“Yeah, I do before I get myself in even more trouble.”

“How much trouble could you get into in one day?” Victoria snorted at the woman's question.

“Well, I got attacked at the hospital by something before I got registered. I ran into a bug at my school yesterday. Lacie was kidnapped by a gnome this morning and I wound up fighting him to the death in my back yard. Where I found this.” She said pulling out a small color with a greenish tag that she handed over to the woman.

Taking it she read the tag. “Simon?” The woman asked.

“Yeah, my kitten I named him for a famous war cat,” Victoria said. “You know those creepy gnome statues?” The woman nodded. “We had one in the neighborhood I would see it in yards around the neighborhood. We all thought it was a kid playing a prank the roaming gnome.” She reached out and took the tag back.

“I found Simon’s tag outside of the gnomes den. He had taken Lacie the pixie the library assigned to teach me.”

“You have a pixie?” The woman said in incredulity.

“She’s not mine. But yeah. The gnome took her last night. I followed the trail and it attacked me. I didn’t think…” The teen started.

“It wasn’t very strong then if it didn’t hurt you,” Sunny said in thought.

“It cut me up pretty well. My shirt is ruined. But I had a healing spell.” The woman remained silent and let the girl talk. “I bled all over the place. There so much though I don’t know and Lacie isn’t exactly talking.”

“Two days isn’t enough time to learn anything, cut yourself some slack,” Sunny said. “Why don’t you help me with the cheerleaders and you can learn what it's like.”

The teenage girl looked at her and smiled. “Thank you. You wouldn’t happen to know how to put a ghost to rest would you?”

Sunny eyed the girl speculatively. “No, but I suspect there is a story to your request.”