It took about a week to quiet down the gang fighting to tolerable levels. Steve came home every day to find that his dad was working overtime yet again. SWAT, riot police, and even the National Guard were called in, but it did little when the fighters didn’t care about getting arrested or killed; they just wanted to fight for superiority. The fighting was happening all across the region, though, so it usually wasn’t that concentrated enough to really be a hindrance to most people. His father had been right about other gangs getting involved, though, since they saw weakness and tried to exploit it, so that didn’t help, either. He had tried to ask about the whole magic thing, but his dad wouldn’t tell him anything.

A month after the incident, the rioting had more or less calmed down and new leaders had been chosen, although small pockets still fought occasionally. For Steve, life had pretty much returned to normal. Hannah had continued to investigate the Syndicate despite the Leader’s wishes, and while they had become friends and she told him about it a lot, she hadn’t invited him to accompany her again. Actually he was pretty sure she didn’t want him to, especially after his dad started making him keep an eye on her. She disappeared as soon as school ended every day and never rode the bus anymore. On the one month anniversary of the bus incident, Steve joined his friends Alan and Jamal in the school cafeteria for lunch, where they were discussing a new video game that had just been released.

“It was awesome!” Alan was saying, looking very excited.

“Agreed,” said Jamal, looking equally happy.

“I haven’t gotten it yet,” said Steve. “I don’t get movie tie-in games because they generally suck.”

“Well, this time you need to!” said Alan, taking a huge bite of food. The food that day was pizza of the school cafeteria/cardboard kind. It looked like it had been put through a paper shredder, frozen, and then rolled into a paste for the students to eat.

“Fine,” said Steve, not wanting to argue. Alan was always full of energy, so arguing with him was pretty much futile.

Jamal, on the other hand, was a more subdued person. He even played in the school band instead of playing football like Alan. “Alan, chill out,” he said calmly, drawing a picture on his paper napkin. “Steve will get the game when he gets the chance.”

But Alan, being Alan, wasn’t paying attention. “Don’t you think she’s hot?” he asked suddenly, pointing across the cafeteria to where a group of girls was sitting. Steve peered over and saw that Hannah was among them. There were six or seven girls at that table, so it was pretty loud.

“Dude, you don’t stand a chance,” said Steve solemnly.

“You don’t even know which one I’m talking about!” Alan protested.

“If I had to take a guess, I’d guess Kirbi,” said Steve, grinning. “You’re always gazing at her in class.”

“So?” Jamal asked suddenly. “Did your new girlfriend Hannah tell you that?”

While Steve’s friendship with Hannah was entirely platonic, that hadn’t stopped rumors about them from starting to swirl almost immediately. Hannah, being Hannah, hadn’t cared about them enough to try to dispel them, which had only added fuel to the fire. Steve, on the other hand, had long since gotten tired of constantly fending off questions about her. He’d given up on outright denying things since nobody believed him anyways.

“What about her?” he asked defensively.

“Well, you ditched the glasses, so we figured you were more or less over Clarissa. And then you and Hannah became friends right around the same time. And then there are the rumors about what you two were doing in the city when that building fell down.”

“So you two are secretly dating, right?” Alan asked.

Steve didn’t respond immediately. His group of friends had originally been five: him, Alan, Jamal, Clarissa, and Ashley. He’d asked Clarissa out the previous spring, but she’d called it off at the end of the school year for reasons she had never really explained. She’d just said it was because of personal issues and cut off all contact via text. Needless to say, it had affected him deeply. Clarissa went to their school, but she’d gotten in some sort of hunting accident over the summer and was still in the hospital, so he hadn’t seen her since then. Ashley had ended up going to a private school. The whole incident had soured him on dating for the time being.

“No, we’re not dating,” Steve said eventually. “She just suggested I ditch the glasses and try to get out more in the world. So that’s what I’m doing. And she told me about that stupid online fanpage some of the girls made about me.”

Alan snorted into his chocolate milk. “She actually told you about that? I wondered how long it’d take for you to realize that existed!”

“Wait, you two knew about it?” Steve asked incredulously, annoyed at the identical grins his friends were displaying.

“Yeah, Ashley told us,” Jamal replied as Alan laughed heartily at the look on Steve’s face. “She got an invite after you chased off those guys who were picking on her for being so shy. So Alan told her to accept it as long as she let us see what stupid stuff they did. It was actually pretty funny.”

Steve was absolutely outraged now. “So when were you going to tell me this? Never?”

Both guys suddenly realized just how ticked off he was, so they backtracked instantly. “Hey, man, it was just a joke,” said Alan. “We would’ve told you if they did something really intrusive, like stolen your stuff.”

“They broke into my house,” said Steve angrily. “They went into my room while I was at Scout camp. Mom had to chase them out.” He neglected to mention that nobody had told him about it until he’d forced his mom to spill the beans.

Both guys looked very surprised at this. Then Jamal said, “Well, we were only monitoring it during the school year. Ashley’s account was the only one that could see the posts anyways, so without her around we couldn’t see anything. We would’ve told you about that if we could’ve.”

They looked apologetic, which cooled Steve’s anger off a bit. Ashley was one of those shy, quiet girls that was really smart, so while she might’ve let them look at the page using her account while she was around, she most certainly wouldn’t have given them free reign. And that incident had happened over the summer when they hadn’t really interacted much. “You know what? It’s cool,” said Steve, brushing it off. “Just don’t do it again, OK?”

The guys nodded and went back to their food, ending the argument.

“That’s it?” a voice said from nearby, making all three guys jump. Its owner, Hannah, took a seat beside Steve, staring at the three guys with a look of surprise. None of them had noticed Hannah getting up and approaching them, so they were all taken aback.

Alan recovered first. “What are you doing over here?” he said quickly.

“Why, is there a no girls allowed rule over here?” she asked back. Alan quickly shut up, a rarity for him.

“Well, no, but you don’t normally sit with us,” Steve told her. He glanced back at her table and saw that every one of the girls was staring at them, whispering conspiratorially.

“I can’t deny that,” said Hannah, stealing a carrot from his tray with her trademark quick reflexes. “If you must know, I just lost a bet and now I’m paying the consequences.”

“You lost a bet?” Alan asked. “What’d you do?”

“Nothing you’d care about. Just some girl stuff.”

“Oh! So that’s why you’re over here!” said Alan, slapping his fist on his palm. It was like a lightbulb had just gone off in his head. “They were teasing you about your crush, and if you lost the bet you’d have to confess to him!”

Hannah looked very surprised. “Where’d you pull that from?” she asked, giving him a curious look. “None of you are my type.”

Jamal and Alan looked between her and Steve a couple of times. “Well, the rumors said you two were…well…a thing,” Jamal said. He started doodling a trumpet on a napkin absentmindedly.

Apparently Hannah hadn’t been faking obliviousness, because now she rounded on Steve. “What have you been telling people?” she demanded loudly, all traces of her friendliness gone.

“I haven’t said anything!” Steve said at once. “In fact I’ve been trying to stop the rumors, not spread them.”

“Rumors? What rumors?” Hannah asked, looking confused. She turned to the table and put a hand on her chin, thinking. “Well, there was a rumor about a month ago, I guess, but I just ignored it to make it go away. And I made sure not to encourage it by just being friends with you, Steve. Why, was I sending mixed signals or something? No, I couldn’t have been, because I wasn’t being flirtatious…”

Hannah continued her muttering, apparently having forgotten about them. “She seriously didn’t know about the rumors?” Steve thought, astounded. “So much for being a super-smart detective and knowing exactly how the world works.” But everyone had to have a flaw, and maybe this was hers.

Hannah suddenly came back to herself. “We aren’t dating, Jamal,” Hannah told him. “Like I said, he’s not my type. But you’re not really the one I need to convince, are you?” She put a hand on her chin in a thinking pose again before her face lit up. “And I just came up with a good way to prove it. Sorry about this, Steve, but this might hurt a bit.”

“What might hurt?” Steve asked warily. Hannah got up off her seat, took a step back, and then reached forward, grabbed Steve by the hair, and face planted him into his pizza. The room had been keeping an eye on them ever since Hannah had walked over, but now everyone was laughing.

“That’s for being a jerk!” she exclaimed, her voice slightly higher pitched than before. She usually pretended to be more of a girly-girl than she actually was around other people, so it was really no surprise she was acting like a bit of an airhead now. But there were better ways of getting the message across, weren’t there?

Steve lifted his face out of his food once he heard her walk away. Every eye in the room was now on Hannah, who was putting on a show by walking back to her table haughtily. “Remind me to never actually make her mad,” said Steve, wiping pizza sauce off his face with a napkin. Alan and Jamal just nodded.

“I still think she’s into you,” said Alan.

“How about we go to the field and play soccer or something?” Steve suggested, looking for any excuse to get away. His friends agreed, mainly because everyone in the room was busy either texting, chatting to themselves about what had just happened, or staring at either Steve or Hannah, so it would be impossible to talk any more in there.

Once they reached the fields behind the school, they sat in the bleachers and watched some kids play soccer. Since the school was grades 6-12, there were close to one thousand students enrolled. It was split up so that the middle school and high school students ate lunch at separate times, but there were still too many students to fit into the cafeteria. So the school had allowed students to eat at several different monitored locations on the campus, including the football and soccer fields, the library (although you couldn't eat there), and the side lawn on nicer days.

As they watched the game, other viewers kept pulling out their phones, viewing the texts, and shooting glances at Steve, which he ignored. As he sat there, trying to salvage the rest of his food, his thoughts kept turning to what Alan had said about Hannah might liking him. She’d kept saying no, but she’d been a little too adamant about it. Plus she hadn’t stopped the rumors. He wondered if that was why she’d called him out to help in the first place, and why she’d given him that harsh speech about changing his image.

But then he shook himself. She wouldn’t have put on that stunt in the cafeteria if that was the case. If she did like him, it would’ve been the perfect opportunity to confirm it, right? He suddenly noticed a girl looking at him from a ways away, who went bright red when she realized he’d seen her and ducked down. “Maybe I should ask somebody out and put all the rumors to rest,” he thought. He didn’t want to do it right away, though; there was still a lot of baggage from the last time he’d asked somebody out. He didn’t know how long it would take to get over that.

XXX

Steve decided to stay for the football game that evening instead of going home like usual. He didn’t really care that much about high school football, but he figured it would be best to give Hannah her space, and he knew she’d be out doing her detective stuff and not here at the game.

After paying for concessions and taking a seat in the stands, Steve suddenly became very aware of how many people were looking at him either happily or apologetically. Alan and Jamal were preparing for the game, Alan as a player and Jamal in the band, so he was planning to just sit alone to brood. However, some girls invited him to join them, not taking no for an answer, so he didn’t get any time to himself.

“You know, you look so much cuter without those dorky glasses, Steve,” one girl said seductively, sitting next to him and putting her head on his shoulder. He hadn’t talked to her much, but he thought her name was Mary or Marla or something. She was one of those girls that focused too much on fashion and personal appearance, which was not his type at all.

“Uh, thanks I guess,” said Steve, feeling uncomfortable. The other girls, who were just as snooty as the first, took this as their cue to start crowding him as well. He ate some chips and tried to ignore them, but the girls took the bag and tried to feed them to him. Despite being overly crowded and quite uncomfortable, he had to admit it wasn’t exactly the worst situation he could be in. Some guys were looking at him jealously, which Steve could totally understand.

He was broken out of his reverie by an argument a ways down the bleachers. “What’s that about?” one of the girls asked. It looked like two guys were arguing about something and were on the verge of trading blows. Maybe one guy had spilled the other’s drink or something. Whatever it was, it wasn't his problem as he only really dealt with bullying, not actual fights where both parties could take care of themselves.

“Stevie,” another girl said, tracing his ear with a finger and making a shiver go up his spine, “can you go shut them up? They’ll ruin the game!”

Steve rolled his eyes in irritation, which they luckily didn’t see, before agreeing and heading to the location. “Why am I putting up with this, anyways?” he asked himself in annoyance.

As he approached the arguing people, there was suddenly a commotion on the field. White smoke billowed out of the center, from which emerged a man dressed as a referee and holding a microphone. “I welcome you here to the football game tonight, students, parents, and teachers! My name is Ralph, and I’ll be the host of some pre-game entertainment!” The microphone blasted his voice through all the speakers, shutting the crowd up pretty quickly.

Steve had stopped dead upon hearing the man’s voice. He had heard it only once before, when he’d gone with Hannah to the building and the Syndicate Leader collapsed it somehow. It was the Syndicate Leader, here to crash the game for some unknown reason. Ralph probably wasn’t his real name, either.

He was right about him not supposed to be there. The principal stomped out onto the field to talk to the man, but as soon as he got within ten feet of the guy, a puff of smoke billowed from under his feet. When it dissipated, he was dressed in a donkey costume. “I’m also a magician, if you hadn’t noticed. I wonder if he enjoys showing off?”

There was laughter from the stands; the principal was not well-liked among the students so anything humiliating that happened to him was fine by them. The principal, fuming, quickly went away. Steve recovered himself and, forgetting about the fight in progress, pulled out his phone and texted his dad about the situation, urging him to come as soon as possible.

“Now, how about another trick? I’ll need an assistant for it, though. Hmm…” The man pretended to ponder for a moment before snapping his fingers and saying, “Oh, I know just who to ask! Let’s see…” He pulled an ancient looking scepter out from under his jacket, made of what looked like gold and topped with a red globe. It was about a foot long and could only be held one-handed. “So, two twirls ought to do it.”

By this point, more teachers, the football coaches from both teams, and several football players were now advancing on him. On the first twirl, there were seven poofs of smoke ringing him. When they cleared, there were seven police officers standing there, all dressed in riot gear and carrying riot shields and batons. “Officers, please keep these intruders from interrupting the show.” Immediately, the cops started marching in a circle around him, preventing the teachers from getting close. Then he twirled the scepter again. With another poof of smoke, this time purple, a girl appeared next to him. It was Hannah Matthews, dressed similarly to when she’d been on the stakeout with Steve, with just a T-shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes. Her red bag was slung over her shoulder. She looked absolutely shocked to find she was at the stadium and looked around in panic.

“Now, tell us your name, if you would,” said Ralph, offering her the mic. Hannah looked at the mic with a dawning realization as she recognized the man’s voice. She looked around at him with a mixture of surprise/horror on her face before taking the mic from him.

“My name is Hannah Matthews. Fear me.” With that last word, she spun on her heel and delivered a mean roundhouse kick at the man, but he caught her leg in midair and gently pushed her away like it was no problem at all, nearly making her lose her balance.

“Oh, you’re an amateur fighter!” the man exclaimed in a falsetto happy tone. “Sorry, but there’s no attacking the magician. Now, let’s try again. What class are you in here?”

He held the mic in front of her face, which was now twisted with absolute rage. “I’m a freshman, a…” she began, but the remainder of her sentence was blocked out with a loud BLEEP, similar to what you’d hear on TV.

“Now, now,” said the man, no longer smiling. “There’s no need for swearing. This is a school, after all.”

“It’s a high school, BLEEP!” Hannah shouted, her curse again drowned out by a bleep. “People talk BLEEP all the time!”

“Not to me, you don’t!” the man said dangerously, although he sounded like he was having fun all the same.

Steve had been watching the proceedings silently up until now, but with the way this guy was going on, he was sure something bad was going to happen. Nobody else was doing anything, but that didn’t mean nothing could be done. “If you don’t act when someone is being hurt, then you are just as bad as those doing the hurting,” Steve said, deciding on a course of action. His grandfather, his mother’s father, was always relaying that quote to him, for he considered it the most important virtue a person could have. He didn’t know if he’d made the quote up himself or if he’d copied it from somewhere, but Steve had taken it to heart years ago. Now was the time to put it to the test.

Steve scrambled down the bleachers as fast as he could go, heading for the field. “So, I’ve been hearing some rumors about you having a boyfriend,” Ralph said, grinning. “Care to confirm it?”

“I won’t confirm silly BLEEP rumors!” Hannah shouted, attempting to grab him and put him in some kind of hold, but he brushed it off effortlessly, tripping her and making her fall flat on her face in the process.

“Oh, it’s a rumor is it?” he said, still grinning widely. “Then why is he coming to save you from me?” Suddenly a bunch of smoke appeared around Steve. When it cleared, he was in the middle of the field next to him and Hannah. “Look, I just saved you a trip!” the man cackled. “Now, what’s your name, kid?”

Steve was still holding his phone from having just texted his father, so he put it away and glared at the man. “None of your business!” he said rudely.

“Maybe not,” Ralph continued, putting a hand on his shoulder, “but you do have a name, don’t you Steve Dodson?”

“What do you want?” Steve asked, anger filling him.

Ralph twirled the scepter again and a stream of birds flew out the top, eliciting oohs from the crowd. “I’m here to put on a show, of course! I thought that was obvious! I even got in costume for it! Would you two care for costumes?” He waved his scepter again and, with more puffs of smoke, Steve found himself dressed in a tuxedo. Hannah was dressed in a skimpy red bunny costume, complete with fake ears and tail, which was making her both enraged and embarrassed.

“What the BLEEP am I WEARING?” Hannah shouted. There was significantly less laughter from the audience this time around, though. Steve glanced at the stands and saw some cops evacuating the spectators. It hadn’t been that long since he’d contacted his dad, so he must’ve sent these guys out immediately.

“Where are you all going?” Ralph asked, still sounding cheerful. “You haven’t seen the ending yet!” He waved at the crowd before more smoke appeared, obscuring Steve’s view. “Now, let’s get down to business,” said Ralph, suddenly sounding dangerous again. Then Steve felt a sharp blow land on the base of his skull, making everything go black.