“You're certain about this tip?” Rylweadh of Mercy peeked around the corner, counted eight guards, and drew back.

“I'm quite certain something fun will happen.” Veronica Delfosse's face seemed flushed, her breathing shallow.

Society Page Lasva clapped a hand over her colleague's mouth. “What Ronnie wants to say is that sure she's sure. Don't look too far into what she actually said. It was out of context.”

“The context is that we're deep inside the trans-temporal fortress which belongs to Time and Chance's fiendish Professor Carmichael. The reason for that is a tip we received that this professor has a stockpile of magnets. We want magnets to practice a maneuver wherein I throw my sword forward a bit to increase my attack range. Am I allowed to listen to people now?”

“You can listen all you want, Theena. Just remember that was a long time ago and she's changed as a person since then.”

Team Phoenix crept through the strange, mismatched lair inside which the various architectural inclinations of thousands of years and peoples clashed. Here was a mandala and there a saint, complete with halo; a spiral staircase wrapped around an elevator on its way up; elsewhere a Corinthian column purported to support a thatched roof. As for the guards, they were all mechanical, so thrashing them was morally defensible. That disappointed the invaders a little bit, but the attractive properties of high-quality magnets pulled them through it.

Up the stairs, down those other stairs, along the ramp, through the arcade. Theena and her goons managed to stop any of the clockwork soldiers and tanks from escaping to raise the alarm and so reached the vault with a minimum of fuss. And what a vault it was. The imposing round door in the center alone exceeded in height the elephant dragon Slay Every Dragon's crusaders contrived out of three elephants and an amount of duct tape sufficient to end hunger among people who eat duct tape. As for its width, geometry experts insisted that would be identical provided it was a true circle, though they refused to elaborate beyond asserting, “That's what a circle is.” Suspicious. The door's designers remembered thickness too, so that the hand of anyone smaller than a stuman would be incapable of encompassing it. All that steel might have been worth more than anything inside. Professor Carmichael had a degree in temporal science, not business administration.

Getting through that might be a work worthy of a documentary, but getting to it already required deeds worthy of poetry and song, so no big deal there. As it happened, others also managed the latter feat and held ideas about a disposition of the vault's contents contrary to the inclinations of Team Phoenix. Marileanna and her fellow rambunctious little upstarts marched through an opposite door.

General Anstralia let her laughter have rein. “Hello over there! Hear any good tips lately? From one of these two? Both of them?” Lasva and Veronica tried to whistle, but guilt deranged the sounds of their wicked hearts as it passed through their lying windpipes.

“Yeah! Thanks, you two! Though we won't know if you were lying until we get in there! After we beat your friends to it!” Smidgen charged heads-first. Nobody else there needed an invitation to rumble, although General Anstralia and Ozric Orn Pallad would have preferred one.

A sloppy melee broke out that contained a lot of surprises. Duelist Theena went straight for Marileanna with the full confidence possessed by any Storm who faced a Flood, only to learn that spears beat swords in Time and Chance. Rylweadh of Mercy lost her Eclipse advantages in the local elemental system as well, which compelled her to demonstrate rather more mercy than she wanted. Uryeong and Refleang, for their part, ended up with no weapons whatsoever, since none of the game's armament categories included phantasmal bears.

Clazdius Oranio watched the whole thing alongside Flawless Pedigree and Society Page Lasva.

“Youth,” Clazdius opined.

“More or less,” Flawless agreed.

“I don't know. I can't see any good angle for when I write this brouhaha up.” Lasva raised her voice. “Do a hard-working reporter a favor and try to bring this whole place down with your Novas.”

“I'll give it a shot! Keraunos Rebirth!”

“It's too late for safety! Supreme Oil Spurt!”

The Novas of Fusberta and Diora, along with all the others, but who has time for those, combined their terrible energy into an explosion that overcame even the vault's structural integrity so that the door fell off its hinges and rolled away like a giant novelty coin at the giant novelty coin derby. The battle halted in a truce as the officers and Veronica investigated the contents, followed by a total cessation of violence when they counted up more magnets in there than they could use in ten years at forty times their current consumption.

“I wouldn't have blamed our tipsters for playing it up a little, but they went the other route.” Serdon Miloz walked between racks triple his height and stacked deep with magnets in numbers great enough to impress someone like him who, to be honest, did not understand how magnets worked.

“They're even labeled. That will make it easier to return them when we're done.” Rylweadh began stuffing her pockets. “If the owner asks.”

Gary Whitecrest loaded up Pocket Button's saddlebags, Smidgen grabbed mouthfuls, and everyone else did something too, probably. There was a lack of organization all around. Embarrassing, really. Nevertheless, they cleared out the vault and vamoosed.

“La da di da, da da di. I hope my magnets are all safe and unmolested. Then again, why wouldn't they be? Only I, Professor Carmichael, possess that conjunction of ambition, technical expertise, theoretical understanding, and sheer nincompoopery required to draw up plans for an interdimensional tunnel stabilized by magnets through which my mechanical forces will conquer worlds unknown. Short of that, who would need as many as I have acquired? No one. Hm, what's this? I don't remember this massive hole in my vault. Oh no!”

Pchung! The longer of Duelist Theena's two blades snapped back to her palm. She bowed and accepted the applause of the onlookers.

“The success of this plan that I confess to have considered ill-considered is so complete as almost to eradicate my current ill-feeling toward Lasva over her self-interested, sensationalistic double-dealing.”

“Is that so, Ballroom Merilia? What if I told you AGN's backers are interested in reaching out to unethical medical specialists for a series of crazed experiments, and that maybe I might leave a name or two in an ear or three? Would that eradicate the rest of it?”

“Contingent on an actual result, yes.”

“Results! That's the word.” Team 720's very own Trainer Eumorsedio frequented the public training grounds in the hope of seeing just that sort of innovation displayed then by Team Phoenix. “I like your results. Love them. Any chance you can see yourself letting a few of those magnets go?”

Theena pointed at a heap of them.

“You're a true diamond of the warrior world.”

“I get the principle. I'm not sure how to get the magnets on the target.” Gradis P. Dorenz ambled over to a training dummy, stuffed a magnet in its pocket, resumed his position a few feet away, and leapt forward, his arms wide for the grab. “See? Pointless.”

“I couldn't see a use either, at first. But then I got a peek at the methods they use to set tables for dinner these days. Darlotte Glofal does the whole thing in seconds! Without moving a step! She throws the stuff around. You're more athletic than she is, so I figured for you to do that with magnets'd be a cinch.” Trainer Eumorsedio snapped his fingers. “I should've said it'd be a snap. Oh well.”

“We're all learning.” R Tanpendan pointed over Team Phoenix-ward with one hand and Team New Blood-ward with the other. “Everybody's figuring out that magnets are good.”