Outsiders Pt. 02

They were less than a mile from his house so he felt Felicia's mood suddenly turn dark as she was consumed by fear. He rushed into one of the dressing rooms and sat down to scry on Felicia. As her master, he was able to scry on her once a day. He closed his eyes, concentrated and soon gained a sharp, mental picture of Felicia. She was scurrying under his wardrobe, trying to escape the grasping hands of some stranger.

Ben heard a female voice call out and say, "Leave the cat, Simon! If you hurt it, how does that let us get closer to this Kidder guy?"

Ben gasped aloud and cleared his mind. He needed to get home on the double. He reached into his belt, retrieved his eyelash in gum arabic and cast the spell of Greater Invisibility upon himself. Krista came into the stall after him and he stuffed his debit card into the waistband of her tights so she could buy the pink dress. He also sent her the order to cover for his disappearance in case anyone was paying attention to how many people were going in and out of the dressing rooms. He pictured his den and spoke the word for the spell of Greater Teleport as soon as he felt his magic flow again.

He appeared in his den, standing face to face with a girl that was the embodiment of female beauty. Her golden hair cascaded down her shoulders in natural-looking waves and her round face was perfectly beautiful, unmarred even by her bored expression. Ben's eyes lowered to take in her spectacular body. She had a huge pair of tits, pushed up by the black corset she was wearing. Her waist was tiny and her hips and ass looked spectacular. She stood taller than him. He looked down and saw that she was wearing shoes with very high heels.

She stepped towards him and he panicked before stepping aside to let her move to the couch. She bent over to lift the cushions and search them. Ben didn't know what she was looking for there, but he was ogling her tight ass as she stood bent over. He had to concede that she was hotter than Krista in every respect, though he had a hard time believing his own eyes.

"Find anything," asked the gruff voice of the man that popped his head in the door. Ben recognized him as the one that was chasing Felicia in his vision. The girl had called him Simon. Ben's fists tightened. He was very protective of Felicia, not just because she was his belowed pet and companion with a human intelligence, but also because he'd lose experience points if she died.

"Not since you asked me half a minute ago, no," replied the blonde.

"Well, keep looking," Simon said and turned to go to Ben's bathroom. Ben followed him, more curious to see what he was doing than to keep ogling the blonde's perfect ass. Simon went through his medicine cabinet and saw nothing that peaked his interest, so he huffed in frustration and punched his fist into his palm. He took both the toothbrushes from the cabinet and dipped them in Ben's toilet before replacing them.

Ben's temples throbbed with rage. This asshole had broken into his home, scared his familiar, ransacked his place and now stuck his toothbrush into his toilet for no apparent reason. Ben decided that Simon would soon suffer a series of misfortunate accidents. The only thing stopping him from wailing on the intruder right away was not wanting to have to clean his blood from his floor afterwards.

"Ok, so there is absolutely no sign of that hot chick we saw drive away with him actually living here," the blonde said from the den.

"Hot chick," Simon asked and left the bathroom. Ben wanted to clothesline the asshole, but reluctantly stepped aside to let him continue his conversation with the blonde. "So, what, are you into girls now, as well?"

Ben glanced over the asshole's shoulder at the statuesque blonde and found himself eagerly awaiting her answer. She shrugged her bare, creamy shoulders and said, "I don't know. I might be. Never had the chance to find out before."

Simon snorted and went to Ben's bedroom. He opened the wardrobe and gave Ben's clothing a critical eye. "This is getting us nowhere," he muttered into his chin.

The blonde left Ben's den and walked up behind him, standing in the entrance to his bedroom. He stepped into the room and stood aside. She leaned against his doorjamb and said, "Do you think he might have use of his magic, after all?"

Ben's jaw dropped at hearing that. These two somehow suspected things about his magic. Maybe they even knew why it happened. They were his first clue as to why and how his miraculous transformation had happened.

He was tempted to silently cast the Dominate Person spell twice in rapid succession and take over the minds of these two and find out exactly what they knew about his magic. He quickly decided against that course of action. Aside from the morality of it, he was worried that the two of them might have magic of their own. If he dominated one of them, the other would surely notice it on the spot and fight back. Besides, if they did have magic of their own, they might be able to shrug off his spell in the first place. He shouldn't assume his superiority over them, just because they didn't see through his invisibility. There was simply too much unknown about them for him to commit to a course of action. Casting against them would be a blind leap. He might land on the jackpot and he might land butt naked in a field of stinging nettles. He needed more info.

He decided to spy on them day and night, if need be, until he found out what he could. He sent Krista the order to buy some clothes for herself and three toothbrushes, one for her, one for him and a spare. He was done playing games with her and he suspected he would need her experience at being a sneaky bitch in order to investigate these two. He sent her the order to come back here as quickly as she could and throw away the filthy toothbrushes.

Simon stood up straight and said, "No fucking way, Raven. No fucking way. Look at this place! I mean, just look at it. This is the dwelling of a loser. A guy that wouldn't know power if it literally hit him with a bolt of lightning from the sky. Look at the shit he's got!" He gestured at Ben's open desk drawers. "He's got Dungeons and Dragons rulebooks." He laughed out loud. "If he had any clue my bolt gave him power, he'd have turned himself into a freaking elf by now. He'd be going around speaking Klingon, or whatever."

Ben bristled at the belittling comments but did nothing. He needed to first get a clear picture of their powers and knowledge and then he'd dominate this asshole and make him eat dirt, literally. He found himself earnestly hoping they wouldn't turn out to be resistant to his magic. He didn't have a clear plan of how he was going to find out their strengths and weaknesses but he felt confident that simply following them around would tell him everything he wanted to know, eventually. It couldn't happen fast enough as far as he was concerned.

"That's kind of my point, Simon," the blonde said. "This guy should not be able to get with a girl like the one we saw him drive away with. Guys who have the balls to ask out girls like her, don't live in shitholes like this. It would actually make more sense if he had somehow compelled her to come spend the night with him. Plus, the neighbors I talked to? The only one that knew about him at all said that he didn't have a car and we saw him drive off in one."

"That old clunker must belong to the girl," Simon said. "And we don't know that he 'got with' that redhead."

The blonde made a face and shook her head, making her golden, wavy hair catch the afternoon light streaming in through the windows. "I'm pretty sure the two of them are an item," she said. "The way she ran out of this place, only to come back in, two minutes later? The way she was looking at him when they went out to the car? All signs point to a relationship. I could see it all over her face."

Ben was surprised to hear a third party speak that way about him and Krista.

"Yeah," Simon said, sarcastically, "you're a fucking mind-reader. Read me this house then, Sherlock. What does it tell you about our guy?"

Raven sighed and said, "Nothing. I don't know why you wanted to sneak in and rifle through the place, anyway. Now we need to put everything back where it was."

"Oh, don't get your panties in a bunch," Simon said. "We hardly moved anything. He'll never notice. Just close all the drawers and we're done here!" A soft beep was heard from the den and Simon went there and retrieved a USB device that was attached to Ben's computer. "This is why we came here. We've got his browser history and a copy of his hard drive."

The two of them made a half-assed effort in concealing the signs of their trespassing and stood by the front door. "What is our next move, glorious leader," Raven asked.

"We're going home," Simon said. "We need to sleep in a proper bed and eat some food that hasn't been bought at a gas station. We need to go through this data and find out his secrets. Maybe I'll hire a private investigator tomorrow and have him put together a file on this guy. Dig up some dirt to blackmail him with, or something."

"I told you already," Raven said, "to get to a guy, any guy, even a loner geek like this one, you need to get to his friends. If we find his friends and I slip into their circle, he's mine! Lock, stock and both barrels."

"For someone who just popped her cherry on Sunday morning," Simon said, "you're awful sure about how to seduce a guy."

Raven shrugged and said, "I spent years coming up with a perfect seduction strategy. You should reap the benefits of my research."

"Whatever," Simon huffed. "Let's go!"

The two of them left Ben's house and he heard them scratching away at his lock in order to lock it again. Ben went to his bedroom and whispered, "Felicia, are you all right?"

"Peachy, Boss," his familiar said, poking her head out from under the wardrobe.

"How come you didn't scratch their eyes out as soon as they came in?"

"I heard them say that you were definitely the one, Boss," Felicia said, "cause you had miraculously recovered from the lightning strike. I guessed that you would like to interrogate them and that wouldn't work so well if I slit their throats."

"Good job," he said. He cast the Ethereal Jaunt spell on himself to make himself both invisible and intangible. His vision turned gray and was limited to only sixty feet. He glided down his hallway and through his door as quickly as he could. Once he was outside, he heard the clacking of heels on the sidewalk and he looked that way to see an ephemeral outline of the blonde's perfect, hourglass shape. He rushed her way, passing straight through the cars on the road and caught up with her as she was waiting for her accomplice to open the car door for her.

She got in the passenger seat and Ben glided through the back door to settle into the back seat. He silently cast the Invisibility spell on himself and ended the Ethereal Jaunt spell to make himself materialize on the back seat invisible. Neither Simon nor Raven noticed the back seat become slightly indented in one spot as Simon started the engine and drove them all away from Ben's house.

Ben patiently sat in the back seat, invisible, and waited for them to drive him to their home. He was going to show them how to spy on someone. He checked the time on his cellphone to know exactly when his spell would end. He had nineteen minutes of invisibility per casting. He also took the chance to mute his phone, lest it reveal him by accident.

"How the fuck are we going to get to this guy," Simon asked.

"Slowly and patiently," Raven said.

"Fuck you, Raven! Fuck you and your slowly and patiently approach! I don't have the fucking time for the slow and steady shit! And, let me remind you, neither do you! If it starts to look like my time is running out, then I'll make your time run out first. You just remember that!"

"Of course! Simon, seriously, man, I'm on your side. Ok? I'm on your side. Relax."

"Relax? Relax?! Are you fucking kidding me!? You want me to relax?!" Simon punched the steering wheel in anger, making the horn sound briefly. "I'll relax when it's done and not a minute sooner!"

"Simon," Raven softly said, "I want your bargain completed as much as you do. You know that. But we'll only have one shot at this and we need to make it perfect. If Kidder suspects us, we're fucked. We need to make it perfect. We have a whole year ahead of us to research and plan and-"

Simon backhanded Raven and snarled, "We're not going to sit on our asses for a whole fucking year, Raven! We're going in as quickly as possible and fixing this shit with all due haste. If you think I'll even wait for this year to be out before we get Kidder to summon the Avatar for me, then you're sorely mistaken. Then you'll be the one that won't live to see another year."

Ben had nearly jumped up to defend the blonde when the asshole struck her. It took all of his willpower to sit still and allow for such behavior to continue. He took slow, deliberate, deep breaths to keep his rage in check. He forced himself to focus on what they were saying. They said they needed him to summon an avatar. He didn't know what the hell that meant but he was fairly certain that he couldn't summon anything. He hadn't even picked any of the Summon Monster spells for his character.

Simon and Raven kept quiet for the rest of the drive and he silently cast another spell of Invisibility upon himself just before the first one expired. He felt that Krista had driven back to his house and was disposing of the toilet-dunked toothbrushes. Simon pulled up in front of a nice house in a suburb that was on almost the opposite side of town from his neighborhood. Ben silently cast the Ethereal Jaunt spell on himself as the pair got out of the car to walk inside their house. He glided, ethereal and intangible, out of the car and into their house.

"Let me just check on my website," he heard Raven say. Simon grunted in response and went into the kitchen to get a cold beer from the fridge. Raven sat in the living room and flipped open her laptop. Ben glided after her to see what website she was talking about.

"Oh, my God," she said in astonishment. "Simon! Get in here! Someone has taken down my website!"

Simon swaggered jauntily into the living room and said, "Did you fuck up posting a simple webpage online, Blondie?" Ben wanted to wipe the ugly smirk from the asshole's face. Even in his gray, ethereal vision, it was an ugly sight.

"No, she didn't," said a calm, strangely accented, male voice from behind Ben. He spun around and saw a figure descending the stairs connecting the living room with the upstairs. Ben ended his Ethereal Jaunt spell to better see the new arrival. As he did that, he noticed a second man in a black suit, tall and sturdily built, enter the living room from a side door.

Before Ben could make any sense of the new arrivals, Simon yelped in pain and went down like a sack of potatoes. A third, equally brutish looking man stood over the asshole, holding an aluminium baseball bat.

"I'm afraid we did that," the first man finished his statement.

Raven had jumped up from her seat and stood frozen in panic. A big, hostile looking man was blocking every exit from the room. "Who are you," she stammered.

The third man pointed his bat down at Simon's face and said, "Repent for your sins!"

"Fuck you, asshole," Simon snarled in response. "I'm gonna break your limbs and skullfuck you!"

The third man stepped forward and whacked Simon on the floor with his bat, making Raven scream. Simon cried out in agony and convulsed. The second man went to the stereo and turned it on, playing some electropop tune, loudly. He and the first man then stepped closer to Raven, hemming her in whilst blocking off any possible escape route.

Shocked by the sudden outburst of violence, Ben crept, as quietly as he could, into an unoccupied corner of the room. He noticed a holstered gun under the first man's shoulder and quickly spotted the concealed guns the other two were also carrying. Ben realized that neither Raven nor Simon had any magical powers. If they had them, they'd surely have used them by now.

The third man kept on whacking Simon on the floor with the bat. His strikes were fast and strong, yielding dull thuds. Ben's hands were shaking and his whole body was flinching with each thud. After the fifth strike, Simon stopped trying to crawl away. "Stop that," Raven yelled. "Stop hitting him, please!" None of the men reacted to her pleas. "Who are you? What are you doing here? Please, stop hitting him!"

The third man swung the bat overhead and brought it down on Simon's head with a sickening thwack. The bat remained there, lodged in Simon's skull. Raven shrieked at seeing that. She withdrew into her corner of the living room and slowly slid down the wall as her long legs gave out in panic.

Tears were flowing freely down her cheeks. She shook her head and mumbled entreaties for mercy. The third man stepped on the back of Simon's neck and gained the leverage to pull his bat out of the skull. He set that bat down on the floor and grabbed Simon with one hand on the back of his shirt. He dragged Simon's body over to a chair and lifted it to pose it in a sitting position. Blood was still seeping and gushing out of the head wound, making Ben gag in disgust.

The third man pulled a small vial out of his pocket and applied a drop of its contents on the thumb of his hand. He ran his thumb over Simon's forehead, making a sign of the cross. He replaced the vial in his pocket and pulled out a rosary. He held it in his hand as he murmured what Ben guessed to be prayers in Latin over Simon's body.

Raven cried hysterically in her corner, begging the men for mercy, promising them that she wouldn't say anything to anyone if they just let her live. Her desperate tone of voice broke through Ben's shock and he realized the men would kill her too if he didn't do something about it. Ben didn't feel much sorrow for the dead asshole Simon, but he didn't want to see Raven's skull bashed in as well. As he gathered his faculties for an intervention, he realized that these three assholes had just killed fifty percent of his leads on the provenance of his magical power.

He wasn't going to stand for them getting to hundred percent efficiency. He wanted to intervene, but he didn't know how, exactly. The only time he had picked a fight in his life before today, he had done it to defend a girl's honor and had gotten seriously beaten up. As much as he wanted to step in, his fear of getting hurt himself was holding him back.

His cowardice made him reach into his pocket to get his phone and try and dial the police. He saw on his phone that his Invisibility spell would soon run out. He grasped his eyelash in gum arabic and silently cast the Greater Invisibility spell on himself. It would last less than two minutes but, unlike the regular Invisibility spell, it would make him stay invisible even after he attacked someone.

"Why are you doing this," Raven shrieked at the stone-faced men. The third man finished with his prayer, kissed the rosary and made the sign of the cross before himself. He picked up the baseball bat and stood in the center of the living room.

The first man gestured with a hand and said, "Step forward and receive your salvation, child!" Ben finally placed his accent as Italian.

Raven's wild eyes flickered between the two stone-faced men inviting her to join the third and his bat in the middle of the room. She shook her head no and hugged her knees to her chest.

The second man suddenly dashed towards her and seized her by the shoulders. Raven lifted her legs to try and kick him away but he was too fast and too strong. He grabbed her ankles and dragged her to the third man. Raven was shrieking and clawing at the carpet in a vain effort to get some purchase and get away from her execution. The men made Raven kneel on the floor of the room and the third one stood over her, holding his bat like an executioner's axe.