Chapter 2

Despite hinting very directly and loudly ... and often, no offer of sandwiches or even lousy tepid soup was ever forthcoming. No surprise whatsoever.

Actually our first round of interrogators weren't so bad. The local boys in blue in their nice and warm double-breasted wool coats promptly invited us downtown 'just to help with their inquiries' and since my aunt had raised me to always be polite and helpful, we obliged them. For now. In truth, they were almost sympathetic to our situation but a great deal of property damage had occurred and the Chief of Police, Mayor and probably the Governor too were all hounding the local superintendent in charge of this case for a rapid and successful conclusion. In other words, they needed someone gift wrapped up to be the designated patsy, and fast. Since we were the easiest available 'low hanging fruit', we got plucked for the designated 'suspect' role.

Unfortunately for the lubrication of the swift gears of (in)justice, I was already too much trouble and politically too hot to just bung into a cell, lock the door and then throw away the key. For starters, I was a Wizard from the Great Western Alliance; complete with an ID card and a seemingly endless assortment of extremely important paperwork signed and stamped by several governments, and secondly (probably more pertinently) every time anyone other than me touched my leather satchel, they received a not insignificant electrical shock. My rather colorful and impressive BMA 'Classified - Official Documents' tag was very genuine alright, and designed to do exactly this ... keep the dirty stinking paws of mundane pismires off of our stuff. Our local Austin office always kept boxes of them to tag official documents going through offsite distribution or via any other GWA governmental channels and I'd snagged several handfuls of them over the years. They're useful under any circumstance and sometimes they're absolutely invaluable, like now.

I'd warned them repeatedly what would happen if they tried to force the lock - a rather nasty fire charm that had about an 85% likelihood of taking off someone's hand and pretty much likely to toast everyone else in the same room. Much to their credit, after the third or fourth electrical shock, they eventually believed me and our pitiful remnants of surviving stuff that we'd stowed away in the case remained secure and inviolate.

Really, I'd been plenty nice, polite and more than helpful for the first three or four hours, but after awhile it had become apparent that even the Chief of Police had decided that we were too far above his pay grade and that we instead needed only the tender care and guidance that the feds could provide. For my own part, I hinted and suggested and finally outright ordered them to find the local FBI agent in change for Cleveland, so that we could be delivered unto his (or her) tender mercies. Much better them than the local assclowns of the USA's Federal Bureau of Magic Regulation.

It was a straight fifty-fifty coin flip which team would show up first, but considering the way my luck had run lately it was no great shock to discover the FBMR had made it to my interrogation party first. No, they hadn't brought any sandwiches either.

I was hungry, annoyed and tired of bright lights being shined into my face, not to mention the less than subtle hints I was getting about how much fun some of the locals might have interrogating Miranda alone, in her private cell ... just their word against hers if anything 'unpleasant or undignified might occur ... or not.' I almost laughed ... it would certainly take more than a few burly sergeants to hold her down so that any sexual indignities could then theoretically occur. If they were lucky, she'd only burn their cocks off. Still, it was time to make sure that everyone knew exactly where we all stood.

"Right! You local pig porkers in blue, go fuck yourselves and play somewhere else. The grown-ups are talking now and don't want to be bothered, at least until the FBI shows up. When they do, show them right in ... they'll probably pat your heads and say 'good boy' and maybe even give you some candy. I'd also suggest that you leave my legally underage apprentice alone. Very, very alone ... unless you want her to turn a few of your mouth-breathing morons into something slithering, slimy and very squishable. As her lawfully appointed wizardry instructor I am legally responsible for her actions, but as a juvenile her magical control is rather imprecise and inadequate under conditions of stress, such as when being verbally threatened with gang rape. Accordingly, I shall hold her and myself entirely not responsible for any and all magical accidents or unfortunately lethal misunderstandings on her part. In fact, I wouldn't even look at her, let alone speak to her ... I can feel her growing rage even from here and the next person to even walk by her cell is quite likely to hop away, rather than walk, for the rest of their natural life. Are we quite clear on this account?"

Very much so. Even the most senior hardened desk sergeants were turning quite green and pale and there was quite a rush to leave the interrogation room. This left me with the local FBMR folks and most of them were made of sterner stuff to be put off by threats. Four of them to be precise, three men and a woman. They were all wizards, damnit, and they wanted the awe and respect that their powers demanded! Not likely, still I was willing to tell my version of the facts one more time for the new arrivals and even answer a question or two, if it wasn't too idiotic or pointless. In my own practical experience, I've found that 33% ratio of bullshit to truth works out best, and I laid it on them with a trowel.

"For the benefit of you new arrivals, Hi! My name is Zak! I'm a certified magician licensed as an Adept by the Republic of Texas and the Great Western Alliance. Here is my ID card." Click, I touched my satchel's lock with my thumb and it popped wide open, eager to be of assistance to me. I placed my ID upon the table for their brief inspection before I retrieved it and returned it back into the bag. With another thumb touch to the 'Classified – Official Documents' tag the leather case slammed shut and locked itself of its own accord. Official magic (even minor Arc-Tec) can be so much fun with just the right sort of audience. The dry air of the interrogation room was also perfect for applying some static electricity to recharge up my Classified tag to full energy. The next moron to even touch the handle was going to take a big enough electric shock to knock themselves silly ... and probably fly across the room into a wall. I mentally guessed that one of these newly arrived wizards would be finding this out first-hand within the next five minutes. I'd never met any wizard yet, anywhere, that would take the word of any mundane law enforcement official at 100% face value. 'Nice weather today', included.

"No doubt about my credentials? Good. Now, I am present, here-now-today, solely because your own government requested the official help of the GWA and I was officially assigned. Accordingly, this is an international diplomatic situation. By the terms of my contract, signed variously by one of your Deputy Attorney Generals, a pair of Assistant Directors from both the FBI and your own FBMR, not to mention several other corresponding seals from a few high and mighty officials from my own GWA that you won't give the slightest shit about. By this contractual agreement, I may assist various US federal agencies with certain very highly classified investigations and even request or render any local government aid or assistance, as necessary. Furthermore, as my mission is of the highest US governmental classification, local entities are entreated by this document to avoid impeding my investigation ... or risk punitive and very personal federal retribution. In short, I have a job to do so leave me the fuck alone or someone from Washington sitting behind a big desk in a corner office will have your balls for a paperweight."

Click, I thumbed my case open once more and then displayed rather hastily my original investigational contract that I'd signed back in Austin. It did give me quite a lot of investigational latitude, but it was nothing like a 'get out of jail free' card. Still, the first few pages contained enough sufficiently vague (and often contradictory) instructions to at least make my new interrogators pause to think. I didn't let them read all of the fine print, but I smirked enough confidence to make them at least consider the fact that their higher-ups might not be happy with them if they bunged me up for too long. I had other documents signed by various politicos and generals from back when I'd delivered the stolen Deseret battle car, but this wasn't the time or place to play those cards. These wizard clowns wouldn't care what any normal VIP thought, politics or otherwise.

"So, while we're waiting for the local GWA Consul General or the FBI to show up ... and I've got another document or two here they'll enjoy reading as well, I'll restate politely for the record one last time that my apprentice and I are just bystanders. Stranded when the rail yard explosion or explosions occurred, resulting that our rail carriage and virtually all of our possessions were destroyed. Not to mention more than a little shaken-up and bruised ourselves. Can you please demonstrate where either my apprentice or myself channeled any magic at all in that entire rail yard ... even for protection or self-defense? I can wait ... I'd be eager in fact to hear your forensic wizard's report on the incident. I'm more than a bit curious myself as to exactly what happened, but although this matter seems to be significant, it doesn't appear to relate to my own legally assigned purposes, so it is with genuine reluctance that I must excuse myself from interfering with your own, undoubtedly extremely thorough investigation." We all knew that there would be no forensic report. The entire rail yard was now a complete magical null zone. Only the most powerful wizards would be able to use any magic at all there and even then they'd learn nothing from the battleground. As for a supposedly thorough investigation ... yeah, right. Never going to happen.

Logically, this should have settled the entire matter. They couldn't (legally) hold me – they knew it and I knew it ... but they were going to inconvenience and harass me anyway out of sheer petty spite until the moment someone appeared with a scary enough legal document that ordered them to release me. Besides, my big leather Adept's satchel was now singing a Siren's song to them which they couldn't resist for long. Believing it to be chock-full of incriminating goodies, the bravest wizard gave me his nastiest smile and cast a general midrange level nullifying spell upon the security tag. Then emboldened when nothing obviously nasty occurred, he reached over to unfasten the clasp and for his troubles was blasted backwards by a massive electrical shock. The poor fellow's heart didn't quite get shocked into complete cardiac arrest but it would be a week or two, at least, before he'd recover from the resulting arrhythmia. As for the hunk of charred right index finger laying on the table in front of us, blown off at the second knuckle from where he'd touched the lock of my satchel, it was going to take a really accomplished spirit healer to have even a prayer of reattaching that digit. Well, perhaps he'd learn some caution from the experience, but I doubted it.

"Well ... I did warn everyone." I calmly stated, leaning back in my chair with my arms folded. "Since I'm clearly dealing with fools, only an even bigger fool would even bother to try and talk any sense into you, so I'm done speaking with the lot of you." I'd had enough amusement and now I was just getting thoroughly annoyed. This didn't stop them from pleading, yelling, screaming or just inanely babbling at me. From then on I just tried to ignore them while running a mental countdown of the elapsed minutes until the FBI arrived to rescue me. It took hours.

In the interim, I think my three remaining interrogators tried nearly every variation of the old 'How long have you been beating your wife?' trick. Your answer is damned no matter how you reply, so after awhile I just smiled at everyone, shut my eyes tight in vain effort to get some rest and kept my lips zipped, except to politely enquire every hour or so if either my Consul or the FBI had yet arrived? The two wizards seated at the table across from me at least had the decency to start looking both bored and more than a bit embarrassed after awhile. They knew that they were just jacking me around to kill time. Perhaps, just maybe they thought that the FBI wouldn't ever show and then they could eventually haul us off to their own local wizard prison (semi-legally) where they could then keep me at their pleasure ... while hopefully losing our arrest paperwork for a month or two. I wouldn't allow that, of course, but the additional mass destruction that would result would be a very dangerous escalation for everyone involved that probably even my Embassy in Washington would have a hard time smoothing over.

So I kept smiling and pretended that I'd lost interest in them entirely, all the while keeping a rather casual but focused study upon the other remaining wizard standing in the back, mostly lurking in the corner shadows. Fortunately she fidgeted and paced about worse than a caged tiger despite being extremely overweight and soon I'd gotten a fairly good read on her. This wizardess (or witch, in the usual but vulgar US parlance) was the real threat of the trio. Her companions were undoubtedly more scared of her than they were of me. Very foolish, but I saw no reason at the moment to correct their ignorance.

She never offered her name or showed me her credentials, unlike her companions at the table across from me but it was fairly safe to guess that she was either the head of the Cleveland FBMR field office or else their staff enforcer. From her body language I eventually decided upon the latter option. I figured her to be their top local field troubleshooter who tended to know where all of the bodies were buried because they'd buried them themselves. Every office of wizards everywhere has one, the right hand man or woman that gets sent out to put the fear of God into the poor miscreant sinner. Back home in Austin, our top thug was named Ralph and he looked and acted more like a charter accountant than a magical leg breaker, but he'd deep-fry his own granny if given the proper orders and if he thought the safety and security of the Republic or the Alliance depended upon it. Unlike Ralph, this middle aged portly redheaded bird had the craziest eyes I'd ever seen. Paranoid, possessed by Deseret devils, or just plain deranged? I really couldn't tell. That made her the wildcard here, liable to say or do anything ... and probably at the wrong time for everyone involved.

For the next few hours though, ol' Crazy Eyes remained a relatively passive and quiet bystander to my endless and increasingly useless and pointless interrogation, until at last at about midnight, the cavalry in the personage of a single local FBI agent arrived to take Miranda and myself away from our seemingly endless captivity. At last the crazy witch now had something to say.

"You can't take him!" She screamed in fury, "And I don't care what your paper claims to say." She tore the proffered document in half without even looking at it and threw the pieces back into the agent's face. He looked young, maybe even the most junior field agent in the Cleveland office, but he had complete and utter confidence in himself. I gave him bonus points for the way he just smiled at her even while she was foaming at the mouth spraying spittle everywhere. Then for good measure she began screaming crazy stuff at me as well, but I was long past caring.

"We're going to stop you. You and The Mole both, and I don't care how long it takes us or how many bodies I'll stomp all over to do it. You're both dead and I'll see you both buried!" Yeah ... crazy stuff. Who the fuck was The Mole anyway? The FBI agent didn't seem to know or care either and he just rolled his eyes at her with a nicely feigned hint of exasperation.

"I don't care what you do with your copy of my warrant; I've left others with the main booking desk downstairs and also your field office. By orders of the Attorney General of the United States, Mr. Zyphyr and his apprentice are to be released into my custody for transport to Washington. I have further instructions to arrest anyone, and especially any government official that does not completely and fully comply with these instructions. Shall I take you to Washington as well, in handcuffs?" In heels, Crazy Eyes had a good two inches of height or more on the poor junior FBI agent, not to mention her plump figure outweighed the kid by at least a hundred pounds, but he held his ground like a stone wall. That wasn't going to help him a bit as Rose began to suddenly channel magic. That was my cue to intervene and probably save that poor junior bureaucrat's life.

She was channeling both Earth and Air together, an odd combination really, but after feeling how she handled the magical flows for a moment it began to make a little sense. Air was really the only decently strong Ley that I could feel in the local area nearby but I could easily determine that she had real trouble grasping and channeling it. She could barely sense it at all and with her fumbling it took her long enough to do this that I had way more than enough time to interpose a much stronger protective Air shield in front of the agent. Regarding Earth, on the other hand, I could just barely feel it far down below me and could only barely grasp it myself with considerable thought and concentration, but she could handle it as easy as breathing. We were fifteen or sixteen stories up in the main downtown police station and the ground was a long ways down. You had to be amazingly Earth powerful just to channel it and bring it up this high through the air, but she'd managed it ... and much easier than I could have done it! I had the feeling that on solid ground with an Earth Ley below her, she'd be nearly unstoppable. I've noticed that often even very powerful wizards really only excel at just one school of magic and tend to have minor or insignificant powers while using other elements. Understandable, they're taught in wizard school to work with their strengths. She must be very, very good at what she did do ... but tonight high up in this police station I did have her at a distinct disadvantage.

I give her credit for some slight effort at subtly. Her plan was to force a weak air bolt reinforced with enough Earth behind it to abruptly stun and stop the agent's heart. An unfortunate medical episode. The stress forcing a heart attack – who could have known? And before the body would be even cold Miranda and I would could then be handled and shipped off to a more private and secure facility for more proper questioning. Not on my watch, still I needed to handle this escalation carefully.

The air shield I interposed protecting the agent was invisible and firm enough to stop her first bolt and the next two even stronger and more desperate ones. Easy as pie; I could have kept it up all night! I thought about demonstrating the more practical uses of Air, such as a nice restful application of a Melon Charm between her ears, but I restrained myself. I didn't want to show off any of my favorite tricks in case we ever crossed paths again. Instead I went with subtlety ... I reverse wrapped the air shield to gradually surround her, gently at first and then more tightly, just to watch her crazy, crazy eyes go wild with panic. She tried too late to counter with a protective air shield of her own to block mine but it was pathetically weak. The Air Ley we were competing for was both weak and distant, a rather high atmospheric one that would have been too tough for most magicians to wrangle with, but Air magic had always been one of my strongest talents, even when I was just a normal Adept. Miss Crazy Eyes was way out of her punching class.

Once I had her firmly secure, then I began to squeeze, slowly but with fixed determination. Up here she couldn't get enough Earth to force her way out and she was too incompetent with Air to try other ways to counter my crushing air cocoon. I had her and she knew it. Even so, it took another minute or two of increasingly firm compression though before her eyes held enough reason in them to warrant an attempt at a conversation.

"Lady, I think you'd better have a seat as you're looking very red in the face. Wouldn't want you to have a stroke or a heart attack now, would we? It's been fun, but it's time for us to go now and I hope that we've answered all of your questions completely and satisfactorily. Certainly no need for us to ever have another meeting together, is there? No I didn't think so. So, we'll say farewell and call it a night ... or whatever is left of it!" I gave her one last tight squeeze of the air cocoon that mashed her ribs tight enough that it forced out most of the remaining air from her lungs. With an ounce more force I would have cracked a few ribs. I considered it, but I didn't want her to take the incident personally. Any future rematch on level ground wasn't going to be nearly this one-sided.

I released the air cocoon holding her and started to turn and leave, letting her two rather obviously frightened coworkers grab and guide her to a chair. They'd witnessed me take down their boss without so much as breaking a sweat or missing a wisecrack. Undoubtedly a first ... and probably also some very unhealthy knowledge that might well lead to a shortened term life expectancy. Crazy eyes wouldn't ever want this sort of story, or any allegations of weakness, to circulate. Not my problem though ... I was done with the lot of them. Alas, she wasn't quite yet done with me.

"Oh, we'll meet again ... in the lowest dungeon of Fenris Lake where you and your young renegade whore will learn fear and obedience to the rightful order of things."

"Been there, done that, have the t-shirt. I will know pain, then fear, then die ... yatta yatta. Same old tired threats. Boring ... why don't you just start without me. I don't bother with making feeble threats myself, but I can make you a rather firm promise ... that if I ever see your insane face again that one or two little grievances are going to get aired out, and probably permanently." I then gave her a very cheesy sort of grin and then a little gust of wind blew in her face along with the air comment, just as a reminder hint that she probably didn't need. It was figuratively and literally rubbing my superiority into her face, something that her insane brain was utterly incapable of dealing with.

I turned my back on her to leave, but kept just enough situational awareness left to sense that she was frantically trying to channel once more. This time towards me. Time to leave her with a reminder that she couldn't ignore. Yeah, there was no doubt about it ... crazy eyes was going to be a long term problem even after this pointless confrontation was over.

There was no point in being subtle anymore. The crazed witch was trying frantically to gather up all of the magical power she could muster and was obviously charging up for battle, obviously so even to the only mundane in the room, the FBI agent. Still, her forte seemed to Earth, almost solely and exclusively so, and the slowly growing force of weakly channeled Fire in her hands wouldn't have frightened me even back when I was an ordinary Adept.

"Oooo ... fire! Fire good! Ugh!" I humorously grunted and then just smiled at her, hands crossed around my waist impatiently. I didn't even need shields against this and when the fire bolt arrived it just bounced off of me and hovered for a moment in front of me, rather appologetically. It was child's play to mentally seize the flame and I began to increase its power about a hundred-fold while twisting it into amusing cartoon animal shapes. Even the two other wizards in the room had the very good sense to back off into the corners away from the growing flame and now searing heat. In moments the ambient temperature of the room had soared and it was obvious that even without any protections whatsoever that no flame or heat could harm me. About the time that the table and chairs in front of me began to start melting, I extinguished the flame with a snap of my fingers. Thus endeth the lesson.

Still, the crazy bitch was trying to gather up more magic for another try, but I wasn't going to give her that option. Time to give even an insane woman a message she was unlikely to forget.

It was impossible that anyone could possibly misunderstand the current situation. With a massive sudden force of applied air I'd grabbed crazy eyes right by the throat, slammed her up against the back wall with rather excessive might until her eyes bulged out. Then while lifting her a good six feet off of the floor up the side of the wall, I then rotated her body around upside down with her feet then almost touching the ceiling so that our eyes could make level contact with each other, now just a few inches apart.

"Good, I see I now have your complete and undivided attention. I'm the God Damned Zyphyr and you're just a bat shit crazy witch that I'll be wiping off of my shoes if I see your little round nose or pudgy sausage-like fingers sticking themselves into my affairs ever again. Are we quite clear on this?" Oh yes ... quite clear. I could see the insane rage in her eyes growing even stronger, but there was also now fear in them as well. Good.

I probably should have just dropped her upside down onto the floor, but since the crazy witch was nearly as big around as she was tall, I had some minor concerns that the impact would either break a hole in the floor or else she'd crush her skull or neck. Regrettably, I let her slowly slide down the wall slowly to let her collapse into a relatively gentle heap of corpulent flesh on the floor. Thus endeth the second lesson. I had no doubts but that there would be a third ... later.

With ol' Crazy Eyes gasping for breath and shamed to literal speechlessness, I smiled at the FBI agent and suggested that it was long past time that we left, especially since we'd been held for about twelve hours without a hint of any breakfast, lunch or dinner. Not even a few miserable sandwiches. We left the interrogation room without another word or even a glance behind us, but I couldn't resist at the last moment applying a hex charm to the door lock as I swing the door shut behind us. With luck, they'd need a big-ass crowbar to pry that door open again, hopefully giving us plenty of time to collect Miranda and get out butts safely gone out of the police station well before anyone could even consider some paybacks.

Once again I'd probably made enemies out of the local FBMR staff, but I wasn't going to lose any sleep over it.

Miranda was already waiting downstairs at the main booking desk for us along with another female FBI agent and they had a pair of official FBI marked cars waiting for us right in front of the building. Miranda and I were pushed hastily into the back seat of the first one and the young male FBI agent took the front passenger seat. The other female agent climbed into the second car which then followed us from a discrete distance.

Our driver took seemingly random turns through downtown for the next fifteen minutes and then turned into a small alleyway where another car was waiting for us. We transferred into this new vehicle and the random tour of the side streets of downtown Cleveland continued for another twenty minutes until the radio eventually crackled with a coded 'all clear' message from the lady in the second FBI car that had been inconspicuously tailing us.

"She shook the tail they'd put on us. Got them to keep following the first car that we were originally in. Now it should be safe to take you two to the safe house." The helpful young agent announced.

"Screw the safe house," Miranda growled, "find us some dinner first! Any all-night greasy spoon diner will do, but get us there fast. Chop-chop!"

"There's a good place that's open all night less than a block away from where we're going. I know the owner. Let's get there and then we can eat and talk."

Neither of us could argue with that.

Miranda and I had no bags or other clothes other than what was on our backs there was little sense in checking out our future hiding hole just yet, and the allure of Dixie's Diner at the corner was not to be denied. Dixie himself was tending the grill in these early hours of the morning and his chili con carne was exactly as advertised, and nearly the equal of my own Texas chili favorites. His cornbread was absolutely tops though, I had to admit. Three slices of apple pie just cemented my approval of Stan's judgment. Our young FBI protector certainly knew good grub!

We were alone in the diner at this early hour and after making sure that we'd been served all we could consume without bursting, Dixie made himself scarce, staying down at the far end of the grill doing some cleanup to give us some extra privacy. Stan actually had quite a bit to tell us.

"Just for your amusement, please read this telegraph sent to me earlier today from my superiors in Washington." He grinned. Obviously there was a joke somewhere here but I was probably too tired to recognize it or appreciate it.