Outsiders Pt. 03

"Where are you going," Krista asked.

"I'm gonna go out and gossip," Ben said. "I'm done with flying blind. I need info."

"Hey," a female voice suddenly yelled right next to the car. "You! You're covered in them!" Ben and the girls swiveled their heads to see a cute, young, swarthy girl standing next to their car and pointing at Raven. "You're gonna die, just like they did!" Her brown hair was unkempt and her clothes were torn and dirty, making her look like a vagrant. Her eyes were wild and sported bags under them, giving her a haunted look.

She reached for the door handle and tried to join Raven in the back seat of the car. That particular door was locked, so she banged on the window. "You have to wipe them off," she yelled. Ben winced and looked around. A few people were starting to notice her. If the cops noticed and came around to investigate, they might take down their names and information and feed them into the system. Ben wondered if whoever had killed the trio might have contacts within the police department and that thought scared him. There were deadly conspiracies afoot and his anonymity was his greatest shield.

The hysterical girl was banging on the window and roof, making a racket and drawing attention to herself and them. She was yelling almost unintelligibly about how Raven was going to die at any moment. Ben saw that Raven was completely freaked out.

"Fuck this," Krista said and put the car in gear.

Ben put his hand over hers and said, "Wait!" He didn't want to drive away with a girl screaming after them.

When the girl screamed about Raven being covered in symbols and that those symbols are going to kill her at any moment, Ben spotted Raven react. He knew, instinctively, that there was some truth to what the shabby looking girl was screaming about. While she kept insisting that Raven wipe the marks off her skin, he cast the Dominate Person spell on her and it took her mind over. He sent her the order to be quiet. He reached over, unlocked the door and sent her the order to get in the car.

"The fuck are you doing," Krista said.

"Shut up and drive us away from here," he said. The girl got into the car and closed the door. Raven slid as far away from her as she could, all but relocating her ass to sit on the armrest of her door. She was obviously very uncomfortable with the new addition to the team. "Don't worry, she's mine now!"

"Yours now," Raven said. "What does that even mean?"

Krista put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb. He sent her the order to drive calmly until they got out of the neighborhood. He sent the new girl the order to tell him if she could really see marks on Raven's skin.

"Yes," she said, freaking Raven out further. Ben sent her the order to tell him if she saw these marks on everybody. "No, just my friends that died, back home."

Raven found her voice and said, "Who died? Who is she talking to? What's going on, Ben?"

Ben sent the girl the order to tell him why she believed Raven was going to die. "Because my friends painted such symbols on their skin as a prank," she said, "and when one of them died in an accident, I watched them all die at the same time."

"She's scaring me," Raven said.

"It's ok, Raven," Ben said, "nothing's gonna happen to you. Let's just see if we're being followed and then we'll get to the bottom of this thing, ok?" Raven nodded, obviously not comforted by his words. He sent Krista the order to make some rookie driving mistakes and take some wrong turns to flush out anyone following them. He sent the new girl the order to keep track of cars behind them and speak up if she noticed that anyone was following them.

After they triple checked to make sure there was no one following them, Ben told Krista to drive them to his house. He sent the new girl the order to speak her name.

"Lisa Ramos," she said.

"Ben, she's crazy," Raven said. "She's talking to the air!"

"No," Ben said, "she's talking to me. She's now going to tell us her story." He sent Lisa the order to tell them how she got to be next to Raven's house and see the symbols on her skin.

"I was researching my second novel when I came across this newly published website that detailed magical rituals and stuff," Lisa said. "It caught my interest cause it had this internal consistency that was very appealing. When it was taken down on Tuesday, I was hooked. A website that was only available for thirty-nine hours? Too good a gimick to pass up."

Raven suddenly said, "This girl is just rambling nonsense. You should order her to shut up, Ben."

Ben could practically hear in Raven's voice that the website Lisa mentioned was the one that she had posted and the three men took down. He finally had a lead. "No," he said to Raven's request.

"I had an offline copy of the website on my computer," Lisa said.

"Please, Ben," Raven plaintively said, "she is scaring me." She sobbed and sniffed. "You said you would protect me. I don't want to die, Ben. She threatened my life. You have to make her stop!"

"Raven, I'm trying to listen to a story here," Ben said. "Don't make me gag you, ok?"

Raven's eyes went wide and her jaw dropped in shock. She gulped and sat still and silent as she watched Lisa like the girl was going to sprout claws and attack her at any moment.

"I asked Steve, one of my few friends in town, to find out who had posted the vanishing website," Lisa said. "He was very good with computers."

"I am not going to listen to her nonsensical ramblings anymore," Raven declared. "Either shut her up, or let me out of this car, right now!"

Ben grinned. Lisa was getting to the crux of the matter and he wasn't going to see her stopped by anyone. "Raven," he said, quietly, "if you don't stop interrupting, I'm going to take your mind, like I did hers. Got it?"

He turned around and watched Raven's mouth open and close without a sound coming out of it. "She, she is telling lies, trying to divide us," Raven said as last. "Don't you see? She wants to hurt me. You promised you wouldn't let anyone hurt me, Ben. You promised!"

"Yes," Ben said, "and you lied to my face in gratitude."

"What," Raven barked out. "I'd never!"

"You lied about not posting any websites, you lied about being Simon's bitch for months," Ben said. "Should I go on?" Raven's huge, blue eyes bulged out to a ridiculous size. "Look, just chillax and let the girl speak. We'll talk all this out when we get to my place, ok?" Raven sat quietly, but looked like she might start hyperventilating and faint at any moment.

"My friend said he would track the website to a physical address," Lisa said, continuing her tale. "This was early on Wednesday morning. He said he'd have it done by the evening and I left his house happy. All day Wednesday, every friend of mine that I came across had those symbols painted on their face. I asked them about it, but they acted like there was nothing drawn on their faces and that I was loony for even suggesting it. Then they started to disappear."

Everyone's brows rose in alarm at hearing that last sentence. "As soon as I'd let them out of my sight for a minute," Lisa said, "they'd vanish and everyone else present would claim that they hadn't even been there a minute ago. They were all acting so normal and I was seriously losing my cool. I even went to the Sheriff's office, to talk to an old school colleague of mine that just got a job there as a deputy. She had the markings on her face, too, and she told me to go home and stop wasting police time or she'd have to arrest me. When I started crying, she gave me a cup of hot coffee and had me sit in an interrogation room to cool down.

"When she didn't show up for an hour, I came out looking for her and the duty officer told me my friend wasn't even on duty on Wednesday and hadn't been at the station that whole day. I freaked out and ran to my house where all my friends jumped out of hiding and scared the crap out of me. They had been playing a prank on me the whole day long and I had fallen for it, hook, line and sinker. Apparently, my computer savvy friend, Steve, took umbrage at being woken up at eight a.m. and hatched the plot as revenge."

"Look, Ben," Krista said and pointed out the window, "a sex shop! I bet they sell gags there. We could get one for Lisa!"

"Krista," Ben said, warningly.

"She needs to cut to the fucking chase already," she said. "That's all I'm saying."

"Or she needs to shut up," Raven quietly said.

"We had an impromptu party at my house that was arranged while I had been sitting at the station. The guys lit up the grill, brought a keg of beer and the girls and I gabbed about stuff while we were making the salads. I asked them repeatedly to wipe the markings off their faces, cause they had repainted them in blood, all the better to scare me. It looked ugly, drying and turning brown. They refused and laughed, mocking me and my concerned tone of voice.

"Then Cassie, who had had far too much to drink, and who had given the blood that was painted over everyone's face, got up to go to the bathroom. Her heel broke and she fell down the stairs. I could see the symbols on her face change color, glow and then fade into being just faint, shadowy lines on her face, just like the ones on this blonde's skin. I knew, right then and there, that Cassie was dead because of a broken neck."

While the girl was telling her story, Ben took the opportunity to pull out his mineral prism from his utility belt and use the Silent Spell and Still Spell feats to inconspicuously cast the Read Magic spell through a second level slot. When he finished drawing the spell out of himself, he looked down at the prism and was suddenly able to read and understand all magical inscriptions for the next hundred and ninety minutes, without running the risk of activating them. He turned around in his seat and gave Raven a good look. Her creamy skin bore no mark on it, magical or not.

Lisa's voice wavered as she continued saying, "I didn't have much time to dwell on the loss, cause everyone else dropped dead in my house. Just like that. They just fell down and the bloody marks on their faces changed colors, glowed for a moment, and then faded from their skins. They were all dead. Every friend I had on this earth, just gone. I shrieked and panicked and the neighbors came running and the sheriff came quick, but there was nothing anyone could do. I was taken to the hospital to be treated for shock.

"I woke up there, yesterday, surrounded by FBI agents who wanted to know what I had to do with the blown up house at the address where we met today. They knew Steve had tracked its IP on Wednesday and they told me it had been blown up. They threatened to send me to Guantanamo Bay as a terrorist if I didn't tell them how everyone but me died. I told them the truth and they laughed it off, insisting that I had a stash of nerve gas somewhere and that I was going to use it in an attack against the US. They claimed that I had gassed my friends as a test run.

"I kept telling them the truth and they finally brought in a psych expert of theirs who listened to me for five minutes and then declared me crazy. The feds agreed, since the autopsies showed no trace of nerve gasses and released me into the doctor's care. I was given some more sedatives and I woke up lying on a gurney in a strange van. I was restrained and the paramedic stood over me with an ugly smile. The ugliest I have ever seen in my life. He said that he preffered it when his girls were awake and then he raped me.

"I struggled against my restraints, cause they felt a little loose, but I was unable to break loose until after we finished. He then readied a shot of a sedative and said that he wouldn't trade his job for any other because no one ever believed us when we tried to tell on him. I managed to slip my right hand loose and pushed his injection into his own belly and pressed down on the plunger. He went mad, but he stopped himself from hitting me. He restrained my right hand again and rifled through the lockers until he found an ampule and prepped another shot. I struggled to get my left hand loose, but couldn't do it in time. Luckily for me, he passed out before he could give me the sedative.

"I managed to free myself from the restraints, put my old clothes back on and left the van and the rapist paramedic at the side of the road. I hiked through the woods until I came across another road and a trucker picked me up. I made my way here by hitchhiking and saw Raven's skin was covered in the symbols. They're the same as the ones from the website, they're just arranged differently."

"You heard her say it herself," Raven said, "she is a lunatic and she belongs in a mental health institution. Tell me you do not believe her!"

"I know for a fact that everything she just said is the truth," Ben said. "Every last detail." He suddenly had an epiphany. "Wait! You said that the symbols were arranged differently. Can you recall exactly how all the symbols you've seen were arranged?"

"Probably not," Lisa said. Ben sent her the order to try and recall each and every symbol she had seen so far and she said, "Yes! Yes, I can! I can recall them all! Every last detail."

"Outstanding," Ben said. He was going to order her to draw all the symbols she knew and in all of the configurations she had seen them in. The thought of learning about magic beyond that of the 3.5th edition of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons excited him. He noticed that Raven stopped fretting and was looking Lisa over with a calculating look. "Let me guess, Raven! You lost all of your data when your place was blown up and you are eager to get Lisa to draw some of your symbols for you."

"That is ridiculous," Raven said, but Ben felt sure he was hitting the nail right on the head.

"Well, here we are," he said, pointing out the windscreen at his house. "Lisa is going to draw for us and we will all be illuminated." They got out of the car and filed into the house, though Raven cast longing glances down the street as she followed the rest of them in.

Ben fished out a sketch pad and pencils from his AD&D supplies and gave them to Lisa, along with the order to draw all the symbols she can see on Raven's skin. He had Raven stand still and pose, though she objected and looked ready to bolt the whole time.

Lisa drew the spell on Raven's forehead. It had an outer circle and a mess of interconnected symbols circling and spiraling within it. Ben could make no sense of it until he noticed that the symbol that was dead in the center wasn't connected to any other symbols. When he read it, he suddenly knew where in the mess of symbols drawn inside the spell circle he had to start reading and how the particular groups of symbols were related amongst themselves. The central symbol was key to properly reading the spell, he realized.

Lisa drew more spells that only she could see on Raven's skin and Ben read them all, though he had trouble making sense of them. Each spell directed how something would change, but he couldn't figure out what, for the life of him. After Lisa drew the seven spells she could see on Raven's visible skin, she stopped.

"Are these all," he asked.

Lisa shook her head no and said, "I can see the bottoms of two more spells peeking out from under her short sleeves."

"Take off your top," Ben said to Raven.

"What," Raven indignantly said. "No way! I am not stripping naked in front of a lunatic and-"

"You are going to be completely naked in three seconds flat, Raven," Ben said. He lifted an index finger and twirled it in front of her. "Either do it yourself, or I'll make you do it!"

Raven's mouth opened in mute shock and she looked at everyone present. Lisa's face showed no emotion, Ben looked fiercely determined and Krista looked pleased, probably at the humiliation she would feel standing naked in front of them all. Krista's glee gave her the anger and strength to hurriedly strip and stand naked before them all. She posed proudly, showing off her beautiful body as if to rub her beauty in Krista's face.

Lisa drew on, completing thirty more spells she could see on Krista's front. After she drew the spell she could see under Raven's navel, Ben finally came across a spell that he could read from beginning to end and it explained things to him. That particular spell connected all the other spells and made sure they would all work together on Raven when the time came. In essence, it turned the multitude of complicated spells into just one giant one. It also told him that the transformation Raven would undergo was a one time thing and that the spells didn't make her a shapeshifter, or anything like that. A different spell would keep track of when they were all supposed to be activated.

The other twenty-nine spells told of how Raven was to be transformed. Some would see to it that Raven's DNA was rewritten, some would activate and deactivate certain enzymes, or cellular lines and yet others would mold her bones into a new shape. When Lisa asked Raven to hold up her breasts so she could draw the spell that they partly covered over her ribs, Ben lost the ability to concentrate on the work at hand and kept staring at her holding up her ample mounds and flushing furiously.

When Lisa signalled, Raven let her tits go and Ben summoned the mental strength to focus on the spells again. He couldn't see what the final shape would be, but he could tell that it would be adopted on every possible level, from her molecules to her organs. When Ben had Raven turn around so Lisa could draw the rest of the spells, he saw that there was even a spell that would modify Raven's relevant brain centers to effortlessly coordinate her new form, as if she had been born in that shape.

Finally, Lisa indicated that she was finished. Ben did a take and examined her last drawing. "No, you're not," he said as he realized the last spell she finished was yet another one that commanded Raven's biochemistry be accelerated and altered during the transformation itself. "We're missing the trigger spell." He heard Raven draw in a sharp breath at hearing his words. "But I'm guessing you already know what makes you change, don't you, Raven?"

"No," Raven said, turning around and playing the scared ingenue once again. "I have no idea what you are talking about, Ben. Please, Ben, you're scaring me. Please."

Krista snapped her fingers and said, "Her feet! She didn't draw the soles of her feet!"

"Raven, sit down," Ben commanded. Raven plopped down on the couch and almost sighed in relief. He pulled out the chair from his desk and placed it in front of her. He gestured at it and Raven reluctantly put her calves on it so Lisa could sketch the soles of her feet.

The two spells found there detailed how the excess mass would be shed from Raven's body during the transformation. A bolt of lightning was to strike Raven and create a plasma discharge that would dissipate the mass in the form of ions, which an electromagnetic field would propel into the ground. Still no hint of what would trigger the transformation, though he was able to decipher that the price needed to power it was already paid for in advance. He had no idea what the source of power for this freeform magic was.

"You know what will make you change shape, don't you," Ben said to Raven, accusingly.

She shook her head no and looked to be on the verge of tears. She pulled her legs off the chair and swept her hands through her long, golden hair. She opened her mouth to make another appeal but Ben cut her off. "Your scalp! There must be some more spells there, too!" He sent Krista the order to part her hair so Lisa could look at the scalp and sketch what she saw there. Raven looked displeased, but sat there and waited patiently while Krista fiddled with her hair and Lisa slowly pieced together one last spell.