On a blue Monday morning, two fashionable men walk through the entrance of a grand foyer, both dressed in blazers, ties, and ironed trousers, with a glint of dancing gold embroidered throughout their uniforms. A stark contrast to the students bumbling about in the hall, the statuesque men wait for the principal's arrival in the main office.
One of the men notes that the ground is made of pure marble with a solid tap of his polished shoe. The entire building must be worth millions if the foundation is untouched by magic, but wouldn't that compromise the quality, he wonders. The constant thrum of ivrent, which he had grown accustomed to at the police academy, was barely a buzzing lamp in this eccentric school. Even the students' uniforms lacked the glint of imbuements.
"Devon," he whispers to his partner, "notice anything different about this school?"
"Huh?" His partner, incompetent and oblivious as always, is too busy playing with his cat.
The man groans, his attention now diverted to the strange looking creature. "Are you seriously keeping that thing?"
Devon holds up the dirty, five-legged cat from the previous day, chuckling. "Why not? Phoebe is such a sweet potato. Isn't that right, Phoebe?" The cat purrs in Devon's arms, scratching her chin with her tail-turned-leg. The man shivers, feeling as though he's witnessed something he'd rather have been blind to. "You should take it to the vet, at least." He mutters, "get that tail amputated or something…"
After the whole ordeal last night, of freeing himself from the metal netting, Temin had made it back to his partner to finally check whether or not the poor creature had been mutated by that crazy girl. To his surprise, there was none of the usual signs of unstable loads surrounding a newly imbued object. It meant that the cat had been living with five legs for a while now.
His thoughts are interrupted by the principal's arrival, a tall, slender woman with porcelain charcoal skin dressed in all-white. She introduces herself as Melania and invites the two inside her office for a cup of breker. They happily down the drink of infused stimulant. "In case the kids are too rowdy, you'll need to ready your mental loads," she says with a thin smile. "I, for one, prefer all-natural coffee," she holds up an ancient teacup filled with the black liquid, "dark and bitter like my soul." She laughs to herself. The two follow suit with weak chuckles, unsure if this is the appropriate attitude of someone in charge of the children's futures.
"Now, the talk is going to be held in the auditorium. There'll be five hundred children in attendance." She puts down her coffee cup so that she can jab a finger into their chests. "This is first and," she pokes Devon, "foremost," she pokes Temin, "a demonstration about the safety that the police provide. I don't need any tangents about new tricky…tricks for the kids to learn." She pauses to look out the window, rubbing her temple. "I already deal with enough idiocy without specialized tech."
The men nod not wanting to press into the misery she has to deal with, although Devon seems lost in his own world, at this moment, shoving his cat's face into the various trophy-trinket-filled glass cabinets that decorate the four walls of the room.
"If you need anything, just signal to me with this bell," the principal says and hands a chiming device to the seemingly more competent cop.
"Like calling a butler," Devon shouts from the principal's desk. His partner sighs and pockets the device. Without so much as an acknowledging glare, the principal continues, "will you be taking that cat onstage, or would you like to leave it here?" As she says this, the cat rolls out its leg-tail knocking over the coffeepot, spilling dark liquid onto her paperwork.
She sighs, "and if you would, please, give them a little scare about the consequences of being idiots in the real world." she leans into Temin's neck, "I'll allow a demonstration of you putting your partner in place."
— — —
"Kids, please. Settle down!"
The teacher is on the verge of a mental breakdown as another kid is rocketed into the ceiling by their flying chair. Somehow, someone had overrode the straitguards for the classroom. Without the restrictions, the classroom has immediately transformed into a circus with students acting more like fireworks and unmasked clowns than the academic scholars she was used to.
Ms. Erett isn't experienced enough to deal with rogue children and surely isn't powerful enough to undo the chaos of barely pubertized children. On any other day, she would've given up, perhaps even resigned for the week, but today the policemen are holding a special talk on campus for the first years. The children must behave.
"Kids, you are NOT allowed to be using ivrent as first years!"
In the corner, Josephine Flint slams Meri Cuniffe into the wall, while simultaneously fusing his clothes into the wall. She laughs like a maniac, screaming "how do you like that, you sexist freak?!" Daisy David, at her desk, is giving teeth to the books to chomp at unsuspecting hands. Her seatmate Ivan Something, probably concussed after having his head slammed into the ceiling, doesn't protest as she guides his hand into the open book. Luckily, the teeth have retained the texture of crumpled paper. Lucky Something is scrawling the worst profanities he can think of into his desk. After placing his hand over the writing and willing his thoughts into it, the wooden table is literally cussing. There is only one student still sitting calm and motionless. Unlike the teacher, who is spasming out of control, the boy observes the classroom with a hermit's patience. So, this is what happens when children aren't allowed to use ivrent ever, he surmises. It's a wonderful sight.
Having no other choice, Ms. Erett retrieves the bell from the locked drawer of her desk. The principal had told her it was only for emergencies. Surely, this counted as one. The principal also told her when using the bell to request what she wanted. The young woman steps to the front of the class, unsure of what is about to happen, then she rings the bell as though it is her battlecry.
The high pitched clanging echoes out in charged streams and reverberates in swirls bouncing between walls and wrecked furniture. It bounces inside the empty heads of the kids, and their movements slow. The various objects in motion drift to a standstill. Her naked eardrums hurt, but Ms. Erret is afraid of the sound fading lest the enchantment dies with it.
The boy, unaffected, mentally guesses at what straitguards the bell is operating with. Clearly, it is doing something since the classroom has practically frozen. He can't hear the bell, however; there's only the resounding whirr of ivrent from the children's doing. As the teacher's enthusiasm dries up, the classroom begins to rearrange itself, erasing all traces of disorder. Then, the children fall asleep. His head swivels around to look in awe of the perfectly cleaned room. He has never seen ivrent used in such a way. Another thing to study.