Sandy’s reply was a hiss of great self-control, her face distorting in a manner that would have horrified her family and those who knew her. All those sessions on the Phobos Stand did wonders for emotional control, and fear for her family’s safety was indeed one of the fears it could and would hit her with. The cold knot of fear and dread in her stomach was flip-flopping as she fought it down, her hand clenching with pure hate and a rising fury.

But they’d been told something like this could happen, and probably WOULD happen. The Families out there didn’t have much in the way of self-restraint, especially when the police and government were generally there to deal with mundane crime, not the moves and deeds of the Families, whose power and influence largely restrained one another. Someone was going to get picked on, and it was probably someone they were going to identify as weak and pliable.

After all, the best people never worked for the government.

The sheer outrage that she was being picked on after working years of mediocre jobs as a non-Caster swept through her. She had managed to Awaken a Typeless Starfield and start wielding magic, working as an artificer proudly at the Coralost Compound, had completely changed the lives of herself and her family.

She owed Coralost EVERYTHING, and she knew it. She fought down her emotions and breathed deeply and steadily, picturing what was going to happen to this bitch who’d dared go after her little sister Dani. She was now being punished for making a better life for herself and her family?!

“Sandy, are you still there, dear? Don’t hang up, now. We have to talk.”

And then a /voice drifted through Sandy’s mind. It sounded like razored steel and silk incarnate, and just feeling it drifting past dispelled any notion of fear at all. -Oh, I like this bitch. Keep her on the phone for another thirty seconds, would you?-

Sandy smiled in total relief at the acknowledgement, suddenly wishing she had eight canines and this bitch on the phone could see the owner of that voice right now! Things were happening FAST behind that voice...

“I’m here,” she breathed out slowly, her thoughts now like ice even as her voice wavered with concern. “What exactly do you want with me and my sister?”

The voice on the other end was both dispassionate and triumphant. “Well, we certainly don’t want to harm her right now. That would mean we don’t get what we want,” the woman assured her calmly, moving into the mindset of controller of the situation, intending to strip all hope from her and make sure she knew she was under control, held in check by her own emotions and care for her family. “I understand you work in the Healing Potions production line inside Coralost.”

Sandy wondered where she’d gotten that information, and decided that someone in the family had blabbed it unknowingly somewhere. She wouldn’t be surprised if Dani had done it, as her little sister was a social maven who’d blurt something like that out without thinking twice about it.

And really, it wasn’t that big a secret. Plenty of people worked at Coralost. These assholes had just chosen someone with family nearby that interacted with them frequently, meaning strong family bonds that could be leveraged to get what they wanted.

It was almost surreal how this whole thing was following the formula Coralost Security had laid out as potentially happening to them.

“You’re after the compounding formula for the Coralost Healing Potions?” Sandy didn’t let the incredulity fall from her voice. “You already know everything that goes into it, don’t make me think that you don’t. Do you think there’s some minor magical trick you’re missing that you can’t replicate it?”

“What our clients might and might not know is not our problem. The proper compounding formula for that Potion is avidly sought after by many, many interested parties. You, dear, are going to help us get it.”

Sandy actually began to half-laugh at the woman on the other end. “This is bad. This is really, really bad...” Sandy admitted after several deep breaths. “Sure, I can give the formula to you right now.”

She could almost feel the other woman tense up on the other end. “Do tell?”

“Oh, yes. It’s not that secret.” And it wasn’t, although nobody spoke of it. To make the stuff in numbers, naturally the alchemists and artificers needed to know the formula backwards and forwards, in both individual and mass-production permutations, and all the things that had gone wrong in the past and how to stop them.

Of course she knew the formula!

A gentle hand came down on her shoulder, and she looked over into a pair of silver eyes.

----------

Thirty seconds earlier...

There was a pounding crunch on the top of the black van. Massive claws bit in and tore with incredible strength, peeling the top of the vehicle open as neatly as a can of sardines.

The Mick looked down from Hopper’s back, both of their eyes blazing with blue-purple Lightning, balls of blinding voltage circling both of them.

The three men, one woman, and one bound-up captive all gawked up at the man on the twenty-foot Thunder Runner perched atop their vehicle.

The Mick pulled with his hand, and Dani Kneiper flew up into his grasp, only kicking a little bit. At the same time, Hopper’s beak hammered down, and the head of the driver of the car exploded.

The Mick grabbed Dani tight, and Lightning tore for the skies, taking them with it in a crackle and a flash. At the same time, balls of Lightning dropped from him and the Bird he’d left behind, even as the other three kidnappers screamed in terror, and strong legs grasped and heaved.

The cars on southbound I-75 were all slowing down at the display of violent magic and a powerful magical Beast in front of them. They watched as with a small flap of wings and a flexing of its legs, the entire van went sailing over the cement dividers on the sides of the road just as it exploded with eye-searing voltage, blowing out all the glass windows and its tank of fuel erupting hungrily.

Whoever was inside didn’t make it out at all. The van tumbled into the narrow space between the opposed lanes of traffic, burning and coming slowly to a halt, while the Thunder Runner hopped over to the cement dividers and perched on them for a moment, ignoring the slowed traffic going by and making very sure nothing came out of the van.

They only needed the heads, after all.

The humans inside stopped screaming and flailing about after a few seconds. Hopper bounced over opposite the van, now upside down, and levered it over off its back with a swipe of his beak, unimpressed by its weight.

The vehicle crashed down on its tires, completely afire. Hopper cocked an eye, made out the corpses with intact skulls, and bent down with three sharp motions, smashing aside glass and metal, and plucked off his prizes, swallowing them down for the moment. He could regurgitate them shortly.

A second later, Hopper spread short wings ablaze with scintillating blue and purple crackles and spheres, and called up to the sky.

Lightning came down and took him away, as it had his Contractor.

---

“First of all, you start with a White Mana Zone,” Sandy said.

The blonde woman on the park bench froze in place, her phone held motionless next to her ear. She was lightly dressed in a semi-athletic suit of average branding, in good shape, and had the requisite water bottle next to her as she relaxed from what was obviously some running.

Very slowly, she turned around, and saw Sandy Kneiper standing right behind her.

Right next to her was an even younger woman with coffee skin, waist-length silken-white hair, and silvered eyes who most mages on the planet probably recognized now.

A bolt of Lightning came crackling down from the sky behind them in a writhing stream of electricity, and deposited a dangerously-fit scowling bearded man with dark hair and eyes there, with Danielle Kneiper, still bound with hand and foot ties, in his arms.

“Then you fucking die!” Sandy snarled, dropping her phone and lunging out.

The woman tried to withdraw, and found she could not, held in place by a telekinetic effect from the coolly watching Lady Fae.

“Wait! Wait!” she started to scream, and then the hands clapped on her face, and the voltage poured out.

It only went through her brain, but that was all it had to do. Her body twitched and jerked and danced as her brains cooked and eyeballs went white while Sandy screamed at her, and then she was nothing more than a quivering corpse hanging from Sandy’s grasp.

Danielle saw that and promptly got very sick. The Mick astutely turned her around and tilted her so she could vent onto the grass there, blocking her from sight of the corpse.

“Ah! Ahhhh!” Sandy blurted out, as just a gesture from Lady Fae took her hands off the woman’s skull, leaving black burns in the shape of her fingers in the melted skin behind. Lady Fae turned her away from the sight, giving her a comforting hug.

“Danielle, could you please hold onto Babe for me?” she asked, her voice all comfy sugar cookies.

The teenager blinked, finding the familiar stuffed doll she had given up to Sandy soon after her sister started working at Coralost was now on her chest. She clutched at her old blue ox doll like grasping at a straw, hugging it tight.

“Home,” Lady Fae pointed, guiding Sandy’s hands over to the Mick’s shoulders.

He nodded once, and Lightning thundered down, wrapped them up, and took them away.

Lady Fae looked at the twisted, smoking corpse of the arranger with pitiless eyes, considering what she had to do, and in the distance, Sama smiled mercilessly.

-------------

Days later...

“C-Commander Briggs, I wonder if I might have a moment of your time?”

Briggs was still fairly steaming with gore, and could be smelled from ten feet away. He was actually somewhat impressed the Archmage bothering him dared to venture so close, especially in such a fine suit.

A suit Briggs was sure the poof would send to be burned as soon as he took it off.

“Eustace DuPont the Fourth,” he said after a careful moment of examining the man. He made a show of glancing right and left. “No lawyers, DuPont? This is not the proper venue to submit another bid or proposal for Coralost’s product lines. Or are you perhaps here to present some other form of persuasion?”

There was something wild and feral in Briggs’ pale violet eyes as his Source Sun bloomed, and the Archmage had to fight to stay in place as he looked up at the looming armored man, who looked very, very big festooned in the guts of various Aquatic marauders splashed about some very heavy armor, indeed.

“This concerns my father,” Eustace DuPont IV replied in a low voice.

Briggs just stared down at him for a moment, unimpressed by the admission. Then he snorted, turned slightly, and held out the burning Greathammer in his grasp as if it were a willow wand. A nearby mage gestured, and with a whoosh, unwhite flames blew down the Hammer, over Briggs’ Armor, and quickly ate away the remains of today’s Boonies attackers. It even cleared up the miasma in the air, visibly relieving the stressed Archmage of the DuPont Family.

It took no more than a gesture and a look, but somehow the two of them instantly had forty feet of open space around them against the crowded Boondocks Wall, all done as naturally as you could wish by some very grim-looking KIA mercenaries who all smelled bad and had weird lights in their eyes.

“What about your old man?” Briggs asked neutrally, massive hands clasped atop Endure’s haft after he unlocked his helm and hung it on a hook at his hip, his low brow and incredibly rough features instantly bringing to mind popular displays of primitive cavemen and Sasquatches.

“He, he has gone missing,” Eustace the Fourth managed in a whisper.