“Ok, everyone, inventory check!” Parne said, halting his magical SWAT team before they entered the black market’s shop. “Deboue, do you have everything?”

Deboue nodded, a crowbar in his hand and taser in the other. He was an older man, and a bulky one at that. “Yes, sir! I have my Tassier, lightning rod crowbar, and emergency health baggie.”

“Mrs.Wilderbeck?”

Mrs.Wilderbeck, as everyone called her, looked out of place. Not only was she by far the oldest of the enchanters, she clearly didn’t get the memo because while the others were wearing grey or dark clothes, she wore a casual skirt and shirt, with a variety of dream-catchers and a pendulum hanging on her belt. “I have the sleep catchers, hypnosis pendulum, and emergency health baggie.” She was very important to the operation, though, as her enchanted pendulum could erase enchanting-related memories.

“Don?”

The youngest in the squad, with a black cylinder and taser at his belt, nodded. “I have my Tassier and thousand-degree whip.”

“Your baggie?”

“I-I forgot it, sir.”

“This is going to be your first bust, so that’s fine, just don’t forget it next time. Derra, what about you?”

“Whip, Tassier, and baggie at the ready, sir!” a beanie-adorned woman said, saluting her captain.”

“Good. Serxil?”

A shady-looking man with his hands in a puffy winter coat shrugged and pulled an entire laptop out of its small pocket. “Its all in. Anti-magic, electromagnetic, and anti-observer fields are at my disposal.”

Parne nodded, taking the enchanting prodigy at his word. Keeping too many different magic items in close proximity was dangerous, so most enchanters only had three on their person at one time. Serxil, however, had recently innovated a bag(or, in this case, pocket) of holding that doubled as a magic-stabilization device, allowing him to safely keep not only his magic-enhanced computer but three magic field discs inside a single pocket.

“Good, then on my count, we will ambush them. One, two, three!”

Felix heard an alarm reverberate through the bar from what sounded like all directions. He didn’t need to guess what it meant, though, as a taser-equipped squad barged into the shop. Well, it wasn’t the black market because it was safe.

A puffy-coated man sat on the ground, pulled a large laptop and disc from his pocket, then inserted it into the computer on his lap. All the windows turned grey. “Anti-observer field deployed!” he yelled.

The rest of the group, aside from an older woman, drew tasers out. The guild wasn’t technically a lawful establishment, so they used non-lethal means to capture and reprimand anyone who went against the monopoly’s rule. Trying to get away with murder, as it happened, was much more difficult and complicated than using magical solutions.

Don ran forward and pointed his taser at the bartender, hoping to take him off-guard, but the bartender swiftly grabbed a glass mug’s handle and held it out. It morphed into a buckler shield just as the taser shot a bolt of lightning at him, the glass protecting him from the magical taser’s blast.

Behind him, Parne yelled out, “Anyone not involved in this, stand down, and no harm will come to you. I repeat, if you are not involved with the manufacturing or transaction of illicit magical items, stand down and let Mrs.Wilderbeck question you.”

The people sitting at the tables raised their hands, some completely unaware of the bar’s true nature, and others simply unwilling to get caught up in magical warfare. Mrs.Wilderbeck walked over to them, holding a dreamcatcher.

Sara looked to Felix with apprehension as she tried and failed to wake Luuko. Felix had to either stand down or fight...Or he could let someone else make the decisions for him. That would also work.

“Drade, what should I do?” he whispered into his phone, still in a call with him.

“Get them-” his voice shorted out as the phone blanked.

Serxil had ejected the first disc, then placed in another. In a wave of tinnitus, it emitted an electro-magnetic field, shorting out all nearby electronics, including Felix’s phone.

Seeing there were only two choices, he looked to Sara. “Do you want to fight?”

She smiled, looking almost excited for a fight. “Drade said ‘get them,’ right?”

Drade heard the gates of chaos unleash on the other side of the phone:

“Phhsht, ZAP-pop-”

A faint voice spoke from it, “Anyone not involved in this, stand down, and no harm will come to you. I repeat, if you are not involved with the manufacturing of illicit magical items, stand down and let Mrs.Wilderbeck question you.”

“Drade, what should I do?” Felix asked.

He thought for a moment, stunned. It had only taken the squad a few minutes to reach them -just how close to the guild did those Blackmarket dealers dare to sell? Either way, they had guts, he gave them that. “Get them to let you out like ordinary civilians, its way too risky to partake in the...”

The phone call had already ended.

“Damnit! Sirla, can I ask you to help me fight the enchanters? I don’t know what will happen to them if the schoolers get caught up in a fight,” he said in a rare display of worry.

“Sure, not like I care about the people in the guild, but we won’t get there in time on foot.”

Drade walked uncomfortably close to her and seemed to wait for something.

“W-what?”

“You’re going to carry us there, right? Turn around so I can get on your back.”

“Who said I was giving you a piggyback ride!?” Sirla said, her hair suddenly sparking with electricity.

“You weren’t going to?”

“I was going to, but you were supposed to get flustered about it, not me,” Sirla grumbled.

Drade shrugged. “I assumed it was obvious we’d do that.”

Sirla had already turned around and leaned down. “Get on.”

Drade climbed onto her back and held on as Sirla’s hair moved to action, splitting into two strands, then pushing against the ground, propelling her and Drade into the air.

Sirla landed on the side of a building, holding on with electromagnetism like a knock-off Spiderman, then repelled off it and onto another building across the road, beginning to move across the city faster than an average traffic-restricted car would. She could theoretically move faster, but she had to balance their g-forces to keep them safe.

Meanwhile, Drade gave her directions, knowing Changeton inside-out.

After bouncing off buildings with no regard for the spectators beneath them for a minute, Sirla stopped in front of a hotel, walked in, scuffed her feet against the entrance’s carpet, and walked out before rocketing off again, having replenished her electricity reserves.

Drade gave Sirla a point in the right direction, and they spider-man’ed across the city to fight the capitalist scum and save their friends.

Felix and Sara nodded at each other, ready to fight against the guild. As proud members of Uffield’s Friend Group, it was their duty to secure cheap magic items so Plan-B could be finished and Uffield’s dream could become a reality!

Well, he wasn’t that gung-ho, but Sara looked excited about the fight, so he decided to run with it.

They quickly leaped over the counter, followed by Isaphela, and crouched under its cover. The bartender pointed to a door where the bathrooms and staff room were located, assuming they were willing to help fend off the villainously overselling guild enchanters. “Get to the backroom. We have an escape route there.”

The young one who had first attacked the bartender leaned over the counter, ignoring the sleeping Luuko, and shot another bolt of electricity at the barkeep, which was easily neutralized by his shield.

Seeing he couldn’t hit through the glass buckler, he changed his target to Isaphela and shocked her with a second bolt of lightning. When it hit, she convulsed in shock, but unlike most other people, a blast from a Tassier 4 Changeton Series™ was not enough to fully incapacitate the vampire. In fact, it was not nearly enough.

She shrieked in annoyance, then bared her fangs at Don before uprooting the counter in an impressive feat of strength, overturning it on her attacker and restraining him beneath it. Luuko was caught in the collateral damage but somehow didn’t wake up.

However, the one with the beanie, Derra, leaped onto the uprooted counter and shot another bolt at Isaphela, incapacitating her for only a short time. With the time that stalled, she unhooked a black cylinder from her belt and flicked it. Doing that activated it, the cylinder ejecting a short metal whip, which glowed red-hot.

Isaphela eventually recovered and swung her hand at the beanie-lady, her arm turning clawed and reptilian-like as it swiped towards Derra. Before it hit, though, she was intercepted by a 1000-degree(F) whip to her neck, leaving a gaping, cauterized slice through about half of it, making her fall onto the ground, seemingly half-dead.

“Derra! I told you not to injure anyone!” the lead one said, running towards the door to the backroom. If needed, they could use their health baggies to heal even seemingly deadly injuries, but it cost a lot to make.

“Sorry, sir!” Derra said as she flicked to deactivate it, then readied to hit Felix with her Tassier. Averting her attention from Isaphela, however, was a bad choice. The very angry and literally bloodthirsty lady was very far from dead and very prepared to use her body parts as projectiles. She ripped her head off her neck, stunning the woman holding a stun gun, then threw her head at the grunt, making a new way to ‘throw yourself at the enemy’ in the process.

Derra screamed in pain, too petrified in horror to act.

While the rest of the squad couldn’t see the horrific process of ripping a head off, they did see the equally terrifying act of a woman’s dislodged head biting into their comrade’s neck.

At the time, Mrs.Wildereck, who was busy placing dream-catchers on top of civilians’ heads, making them fall asleep, was petrified in horror, unused to witnessing bloodshed in her years of working as the civilian-round-up’er for the SWAT team.

The whole squad averted their attention from the three trying to escape to save Derra.

Upon witnessing the horrid scene, Serxil pretended he saw nothing and ejected the electromagnetic field in exchange for the emergency anti-magic arena disc, ready to use it if things got too dangerous.

In the brief distraction made by the vampire’s gruesome act, Sara, Felix, and the bartender made a mad dash towards the backroom, slipping past the squad’s guard.

Inside was the kitchen, where the bartender’s accomplice/cook ran up to the group, having just noticed the commotion. He was older than the bartender, and for some reason, had a floating hoola-hoop above his head like a halo. “What’s going on out there, David? Why is there screaming?!”

“We’re being raided, Kayle. The guildies are here.”

“Damnit,” Kayle said, stomping on the ground. “I guess we need to run from the money-grubbing guildies again?”

“Not yet,” Felix said. “We have backup coming, plus they’re distracted by a vampire.”

“A vampire! Do those suddenly exist?” A thud could be heard in the main room, then a shriek as piercing as a banshee’s, making the rebels hold their ears in pain.

“And I’m ready to fight to the best of my ability!” Sara said once it had ended, punching her palm to show her eagerness.

“Didn’t know you liked fighting, Sara,” Felix noted.

“I didn’t know either!” Sara said, yelling for no reason. “But I do now!”

The two enchanters looked between themselves. If they ever had a good chance of beating those damned guildies in a fight for once, it was now.

Kayle nodded, grasping his hoola-hoop in one hand as if he would throw it like a frisbee. “If you youngsters want to fight, then let’s not waste time. On my mark, we go out!”

David ran to a drawer, removed a remote, turned it on, and flew a drone out of the drawer. He threw his glass shield to Felix as he reconvened with the others.

Kayle counted down for their counterattack, “One, two, three!”

Meanwhile, Isaphela’s body stood spread its wings intimidatingly before leaping at Derra, trying to claw at her.

“Incapacitate the body!” Parne yelled to his comrades before pulling a knife from his jacket and stabbing it into the vampire’s head as it bit Derra and tried to pry it off. As the leader, he couldn’t afford to falter in deadly situations.

Before the body could injure Derra, it was met by a crowbar in the stomach, making it roll back onto the floor before another tassier made it writhe uncontrollably on the floor. Where the crowbar had it her, though, a blue flame began to spread around the body. The blue flame couldn’t be put out with anything but pure water, so even as the vampire’s body tried to put it out with the floor, it continued to burn her alive.

Parne managed to pry her head off Derra, throwing it onto the ground. The whole affair was a bloody mess, but in the end, it all cleared up in an instant when Isaphela screamed right before her body, head, and spilled blood turned into smoke and flew out the door.

“Was that a fucking vampire!? Deboue asked just before a hoola-hoop hit his face. From it, a burst of raw force launched him three feet back. Sara, Felix, Kayle, David, and a drone burst from the back room, ready to fight.

Kayle’s hoop returned to him like a boomerang and hovered vertically in front of him, doubling as a forcefield shield.

Felix stood behind Sara, ready to follow her into a fistfight if need be.

Unaware to any of the combatants, three civilians Mrs.Wilderbeck had put to sleep with magical dream-catchers were suddenly awake, or rather, sleep-walking. They simultaneously sat up from their chairs, then shambled towards the fight in an unnerving march, one grabbing a mug, one a wooden chair, and another picking up a shard of glass. The sleepy were walking once more!

Oh, and Luuko was still fast asleep underneath the counter with an annoyed frown on her face.

Sara ran straight into the fight, towards Serxil, but he raised his hands in surrender, wanting nothing to do with the bloodthirsty-looking high schooler threatening him.

Seeing he wouldn’t be any fun to beat down, she swiveled halfway to him, then ran towards the one with the crowbar, arm raised for a punch. Suddenly, a bolt of lightning hit her legs, making her trip and fall in front of the fallen counter. Although they couldn’t move much, the SWAT member beneath it had shot her with his Tassier. Surprisingly, one shot wasn’t quite enough to incapacitate Sara, so he fired another bolt at her face, fully incapacitating her before she could do anything.

Felix’s face twisted in anger, and he ran towards their leader, ready to smash his shield into his skull. Seeing Parne raise his Tassier as Felix approached, David controlled the drone, making it shoot lightning at their leader’s hand, shocking him into dropping his Tassier. The shock left his left hand too shook to move, the drone’s attack clearly weaker than the Tassiers’.

Felix smashed his shield straight into the leader’s head, shouting, “Don’t you dare harm Sara like that!” as he did so before redirecting his attention to the object of his hate, prone under the overthrown counter. He raised his shield high, ready to throw it down.

Suddenly, a bolt of lightning struck him in the back, instantly incapacitating him.

Derra was rising from the ground, a hand to her neck. Where she’d been bitten, she held a ziplock bag of green liquid, the liquid falling down her haphazardly. In her other hand, she pointed a Tassier at the now-falling Felix.

She yelled out, “Deboue, now!”

David shot at her, but Deboue raised his crowbar into the air, still prone on the ground. When he did, it glowed blue and attracted the lighting to it, rendering the drone practically useless as long as he held it up.

Electricity was one of the most reliable weapons an enchanter could use because it was easy to implement in enchantments, too fast to dodge, homed in on conductors -namely humans- However, the enchantment team had designed the lightning-rod crowbar as a method to defend against such attacks.

Derra glanced at Deboue as he raised the crowbar up but froze in surprise as she saw a sleep-walking, zombie-like person raising a chair above his head. She cried out to him, “Behind you!”

But Kayle used her distraction to throw his hoop at her.

If the two attacks hit, they would have won.

As Serxil activated his trump card, the sleep-walking people fell onto their backs, the hoop hit Derra but bounced off harmlessly, the incapacitated Felix’s shield revered into a mug, and David’s drone crashed into the ground like a piece of plastic, the anti-observer and electro-magnetic-field were disabled, and Luuko suddenly woke up with a panicked expression, before pretending to still be asleep.

The antimagic field had activated.

Kayle and David were surprised and defenseless, while Derra and Kayle quickly ran at the defenders with their now-ordinary tasers and shocked them before they could run, going too far in their adrenaline, brutally incapacitating the black market enchanters.

“Nice save, Serxil,” Derra said once she’d finished, rubbing her neck, though all traces of her wound were gone.

“No prob, all in a day’s work.” He deactivated the anti-magic field with a tap on his computer, then replaced the disk with the anti-observer one, reactivating the field, the windows turning grey once more. “I said anti-magic was the best magic.”

“I won’t doubt you again, Serxil,” Darra said with a nod of acknowledgment.

Then, as the team began to reconvene, a menace walked in.

Sirla landed beside the building, her hair crackling and writhing with static, then peered into one of the windows, keeping her and Drade mostly hidden. Inside, she only saw a bartender cleaning a glass in the stereotypical way, and some people enjoying drinks in the back of it.

“I don’t see anything of note inside. Are you sure this is the right place?”

Drade looked at her face from above, looking at her with half-closed eyes. “Are you sure you don’t see the fight going on?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking ab-” Suddenly, her still tense hair fell limp, and she saw inside the building, where the antimagic field had been activated, as the SWAT team began to incapacitate the black market dealers in brutal fashion. “Oh, an anti-observer field. Those disguise magic events in a certain radius and make things look normal. How come you could see through it, though?”

“Illusions don’t affect me.”

“Got...it...you mentioned that earlier too.” Sirla let Drade down. “Well, once its down, I’ll make my entrance.”

It took a hot second, but the anti-observer field was applied again, making the restaurant appear normal.

Sirla then walked in. In an instant, the three awake combatants, who were still on-guard, shot a volley of lightning at her with their Tassiers, making her fall to the ground, her hair puffing out into a spherical plume.

“Oh shit!” Derra said, “That could have killed her!”

Sirla’s hair condensed, then propelled her back onto her feet. Slowly, dramatically, she raised her head and glared at the girl. She licked her lips as if she had eaten a very tasty snack. “Thanks for giving me the means to beat the hell out of you!” She said, winking.

The fight was over in the blink of an eye. Sirla’s hair broke into a five strands, one for every awake member of the squad, and knocked each of them to the ground in savage sweeps powerful enough to knock them each out in one blow.

Sure, enchanters had neat gadgets like anti-magic fields, but Sirla’s magic was a magnitude stronger than theirs. If she wanted to, she could have anchored them to the ground like she had with Drade, made their heads attract each other and knock each other out, or went full-on Palpatine on them, unleashing a stream of electricity through her fingers. She found the latter option to be a wasted opportunity.

Drade stepped from behind the door. “Nice job, Sirla. Couldn’t have done it without you.”

Sirla stood proudly over the bodies of her short-lived aggressors. “You bet not! Also, I was easy on you this time, but next time you leave the restaurant without eating the food you paid for, there won’t be apologies, got it?”

Drade shrugged. “Will do, though I won’t have any reason to buy from you after this.”

“We’re a charity! Why not come by and shop some?”

“I give half my group’s funds to charity work too. If I bought from the guild, I would have been forced to cut into that budget.”

“Wait, really? I just thought you were a stink!”

“I can see why you did -I’ve been told I come off as a bit apathetic.”

Sirla sighed. “You don’t say.”

Drade looked over the bodies, then to Sirla’s proud smirk, and absently smiled back. “Actually, come to think about it, I gave you $9000, but did that include tax?”

Sirla chuckled. “No, silly, there aren’t taxes in pocket dimensions.”

“What do you mean? Do you not realize my granddad has a flat 3% tax on all pocket dimension transactions?”

She laughed, “Ohhhh noooo!”

“No, seriously. My granddad is Ru’Ilak, the great one of interdimensional space, otherwise known as the ether. He taxes that stuff to help fund my dad’s retirement plan.”

Sirla wasn’t sure, given his deadpan expression and tone, whether Drade was joking or not.

But I’ll give you a hint: he wasn’t.