At dinner that night, the usual gang found that its membership had again been increased by one -- Simon's new girlfriend Mary, a mousy geekette, had joined the table. Simon and Mary both looked uncomfortable, and they didn't say much to each other. Ivan realized that he was going to have to get them drunk *again* if their relationship was going to progress beyond this awkward stage.

Talk at the table quickly turned to the new rules. Jasmine rather liked the idea of the security cameras, especially since she was sure she could have them under *her* control before the day was out. The others were similarly sure that they, personally, could get past any of the new rules if they so chose. Corinna reported, for example, that the rules were not being enforced on the high school side of the lake, and that she had already cultivated a number of "friends" over there. They could serve as ineffective chaperones for off-campus excursions, like the trip to the mall she, Mel, and Jasmine were planning for the next day, and as suppliers for certain hard-to-obtain goods (she said while palming Ivan a vial of cocaine in thanks for sharing drugs with her earlier).

But what about the poor, ordinary, sheeplike students on campus? Some were already circulating a petition calling for everyone to skip class on Monday in protest, but experienced troublemaker Ivan was sure that was doomed to failure. He proposed the formation of a "terrorist group" to inspire the masses and teach the administration the folly of its ways. The other mages and Corinna quickly agreed, and so was born HALF, the Huntington Academy Liberation Front. The first "HALF measures" would commence the following week, once Ivan had thought of something appropriately dastardly.

Moving to other business, the group considered what to do for the following weekend's Halloween festivities. (The administration had quickly backed down on a plan to forbid Halloween activities in the face of a massive student outcry.) Jasmine thought the group should host a haunted house for all the mundane students, using their magickal talents to make it an unforgettably scary experience. She had hoped to take on Ivan as a partner in the enterprise, but he seemed unenthusiastic, insisting that for him, Halloween was like April Fools for pranksters -- the day when the professionally wicked take a rest and leave the field to the amateurs. Mel and Corinna signed on immediately, however, and between them pressured Ivan into helping out. His interest was piqued further when Jasmine proposed incorporating the haunted house into their "terrorist" plans, holding it off-campus and spreading the word among the student population to encourage rule-breaking. Ivan liked that, and proposed turning the thing into a full-fledged party, with passage through the haunted house the only way in. Finding this plan acceptable, the group set about making it a reality.

The next morning, Ivan called up a hotel in the city and, deepening his voice as much as he could, asked about the availability of facilities for a party. The hotel was booked, but suggested a large warehouse that was sometimes rented for such purposes. They also agreed (for a nominal fee) to assign one of their shuttle buses to ferry folks from just off the Huntington campus to the party and back. Ivan then called the warehouse, sure that such an ideal site would be booked a week before Halloween. But it was not, and the owners happily made the arrangements. Calling around to find a desperate local band to play the party, Ivan found that most hung up when his impromptu job interview got to the question "Do you have any objection to sleeping with middle school girls?" Dropping the question, he was soon rewarded with the services of a band called Crib Death.

Meanwhile, the girls were getting ready to hit the mall. Corinna had done the necessary paperwork, and had acquired the services of a dimwitted high-schooler named Brett as a chaperone/chauffeur, so they were good to go. Once at the mall, the girls sent Brett off to browse *manly* stores and set about their shopping. Corinna had her hands full persuading Mel to adopt a less modest style of dress, but eventually got her into a tight (but long) skirt outfit and contact lenses. A new hairstyle and makeup completed the transformation, though Corinna couldn't be sure how long Mel would put up with it. She found Jasmine a more willing guinea pig, however, especially when she promised to give the younger girl a look that was "a little more Britney Spears and a little less Winnie-the-Pooh."

When the girls made their grand entrance at dinner in the cafeteria, the boys were duly impressed. Ivan was so thoroughly turned on by Mel's new look -- and made his interest so obvious -- that Mel had to be physically restrained to keep her from leaving to change clothes. Tyler pointedly did *not* look at Melanie, and contented himself with teasing Jasmine about how much her daddy would freak if he saw her in makeup.

On Sunday, Ivan got a surprise when he saw Nate packing up to move out of his room. The *former* resident advisor had lost his job for condoning Ivan's wild party in the dorm a few days before, and had only escaped expulsion through the intervention of his wealthy father. Ivan felt a little responsible -- and knew well that the devil you know is preferable to the devil you don't -- and so he promised to have Nate his job back shortly. He wasn't sure how he was going to accomplish that, though. Later, when the replacement RA showed up and proved to be a spit-and-polish ROTC type named John Dobson, Ivan became even more determined to reinstate Nate.

Monday morning saw Ivan and Corinna's acting class preparing for play tryouts. The play was _Faust_, and both young troublemakers were hot to portray Mephistopheles. Their virtuoso performance at the audition virtually guaranteed them important parts, but it would be a few days before they learned which had won the coveted Devil role.

That night, HALF conducted its first official action. The plan was to break into the headmistress's office, dismantle her desk, and reassemble it in perfect order atop the clock tower that crowned the administration building. First, to facilitate sneaking in and out, and to commence his campaign of terror against the new RA, Ivan coated Dobson's doorknob with an LSD/DMSO mix. Then, while Jasmine monitored from afar and kept the security cameras from noticing them, Ivan and Tyler undertook the mission. With Tyler keeping a lookout for the security guards, Ivan employed Entropic magick to enter the headmistress' personal security code on the keypad lock, thus making it appear that she herself had been the nighttime intruder. Sneaking into the office proper, they paused to take a look through the student files (Ivan's was frightfully thick, Tyler's embarrassingly thin) before starting to empty out the desk drawers. Ivan flipped on the headmistress' computer and used it to message Jasmine, suggesting that she arrange a backdoor for herself on the machine while they were at it. She did so easily. When the boys were finished unloading the desk drawers onto the chair, Jasmine blipped in to teleport all that stuff to the top of the tower. Then, with a telekinetic assist from Ivan, the boys carted the desk and computer up there as well, and the group set about putting everything back in order, leaving a copy of the HALF Manifesto atop the desk to claim credit for the deed. Sneaking out the way they'd come in, the kids removed their prints from the building and headed back to get some sleep.

The next morning, the entire student body gazed in amusement upon the results of HALF's prank. The headmistress, of course, was *not* amused, and said so in a stern lecture over the PA system during breakfast. Unfortunately, her authoritarian tone was undermined when Ivan hit her with magickal mike feedback *again*, and her "Goddammit!" of frustration went out over the speakers, giving all the kids a good laugh.

In computer class, Jasmine found that Ivan had yet another shopping list for her. He needed her to procure certain chemicals, one of those devices used to paint lines on roads, key-making equipment, and someone's master key. After class, Jasmine called up T.C. Mitnick for the first three (ringing up another favor she owed him in the process) and easily obtained the last from an unobservant janitor.

That night, Ivan and Tyler used the newly-procured equipment on a particularly audacious HALF mission. (This time, before leaving the dorm, Ivan sealed the RA's door shut with Dobson inside.) Evading the security guards through a combination of stealth and Jasmine's surveillance, they spread Ivan's chemical mixture across the common, then ignited it and ran. The next morning would see the letters H-A-L-F burned deeply into the lawn, a message of literally fiery rebellion. Ivan then snorted Corinna's cocaine and spent the rest of the night wide awake, making copies of the stolen master key.

After that, it was decided that HALF should take a rest from active rebellion for a few days, lest the heat build up too far and someone get caught. To keep the pressure on, though, Ivan and Jasmine hatched a plan to introduce subtle math errors into certain important financial calculations in the school computers. ("You're telling me I have $700,000 on my meal card? Well then, I'm going back for seconds!")

The group spent the next few evenings preparing their Halloween party and haunted house. Through Brandon, they picked up most of the soccer team as confederates, giving them costumed monsters aplenty. Corinna recruited her dimwitted high school "friend" Brett (and made Ivan squirt milk out his nose when she mentioned that she'd avoided Brett's sexual advances by insisting that such things were strictly against her religion.) Artsy types were recruited to create spooky tableaux and decorations for the party. Jasmine rigged up sound and lighting systems that could be controlled from her computer. Tyler, who felt that he shouldn't participate too actively in the affair in his current mental state (he'd just gotten himself suspended from the soccer team for beating up another teammate), nevertheless presented a list of suggested horrors to stage, most of which were just *too* disturbing to be used. Lastly, Ivan walked the flimsy corridors ofthe haunted house and impressed telempathic fear into the very walls, taking care to immunize the "staff" from the effect. The place was ready for visitors.

Late in the week, the acting class finally found out who'd gotten parts in _Faust_. Ivan learned he'd been selected for the title role, while Corinna would be doing a female turn on Mephistopheles. Draping a booted leg over Ivan's shoulder from her seat behind him, Corinna teased him about losing his soul to her clutches. Ivan reminded her that they were doing the version of _Faust_ in which the doctor finds salvation in the end. "Well," said Corinna in a comment that didn't seem to apply *only* to the play, "I may not get you in the end, but I'll make sure you're good and tempted the whole way." Replied Ivan with a grin, "Get thee behind me, Satan."

Also toward the end of the week, Tyler visited Ivan's room to ask if the other boy still thought he needed a good ass-kicking. Ivan declined to administer an actual beating, but did tell Tyler that he considered him a coward in some ways, and that if that cowardice wasn't dealt with, he feared Tyler would become a soulless killer like Chadwick Bryce . . . at which point Ivan would have to kill him. Tyler didn't deny the assessment, and explicitly *instructed* Ivan that if he were ever to become a threat to others -- especially Mel or Jasmine -- Ivan was to put him down.

At last the weekend came, and it would soon be time for the party. The day before, Ivan turned Kelli and Brandon loose to spread the word across the campus. Apparently the mood of rebellion was strong, because no one squealed. Even Nate (who'd gotten his RA job back after Dobson had quit in a huff) merely met Ivan in the hall with a wink-wink-nudge-nudge act, and said he was planning on attending the shindig himself.

And so the festivities began. Folks sneaked off campus in small groups to meet the hotel bus, which conveyed them to the warehouse. There they entered the haunted house, where the loyal staff stood ready to scare them witless before admitting them to the party beyond. Things went well for quite a while. Then Ivan noticed Brett in his "chainsaw killer" getup chasing a couple of squealing guests down the corridor. All well and good, except that the chainsaw was *real*, unlike the bladeless one they'd given Brett. In fact, that wasn't Brett's costume. . . .

Letting the "victims" get away, Ivan stopped the chainsaw-wielder and asked for ID. The inarticulate fella growled and gestured menacingly with the chainsaw. Realizing they had an uninvited guest, Ivan looked over at Jasmine's nearest surveillance camera and told her to locate Tyler, lest carnage should need to be done. Jasmine agreed, but reported that whoever Ivan was confronting didn't show up on her monitor. Emboldened by this news, Ivan ordered the chainsaw killer to GO AWAY -- and it immediately vanished. Then he went to find other staffers and warn them about the new situation. Seeing Simon, Ivan told him to go find Shannon; he feared a ghostly incursion, and figured it would be good to have the local friendly wraith on hand in case of another unpleasant encounter. Then Ivan found Mel, who wanted to know why the walls were bleeding. Ivan explained things as best he could, and tried to sound reassuring. A guest walked by and complimented the staff on the wall-bleeding effect. Ivan nervously accepted the thanks and resolved to get to the bottom of things.

Meanwhile, Jasmine was having little luck finding Tyler. Normally it would have been no problem; she'd had him practically covered in surveillance devices for years. But this time something seemed to be blocking her efforts. Teleporting Tyler's gun to her hand from its hiding place in her room, she tried to use the resonance of a personal possession to "up the gain" on the tracking signal, but without success. Studying the block more thoroughly, she recognized it as the programming work of her mentor, Nightshade. No doubt Shade had supplied the Elliots with anti-surveillance devices during the recent family feud; Tyler had apparently kept his, and was using it (on purpose?) to block Jasmine's spying.

Back inside the haunted house, Ivan had begun actively searching for the mysterious manifestations. He came across one student who was screaming her head off, pinned to the wall by something that looked like a mutant bobcat. Assuming his "monster" persona, he challenged the creature for its victim, thereby allowing the girl to get away, still safely under the belief that this was all a staged performance. Then, hefting the fake-blood-covered kitchen knife he'd been wielding as a "murder weapon," Ivan prepared to do battle with what he fervently hoped was another illusion. That hope was dispelled when the thing pounced on him and pinned him to the ground, hard. Frantically he stabbed at it with the knife while it tried to bite his face off. Finally it collapsed, after getting mutant-bobcat blood all over Ivan's costume (not just the haunted-house one, but the rented tux he was wearing underneath as a "James Bond" costume for the party).

Around that time, Brandon came into the "staff" area, where Jasmine was still trying to locate Tyler. She asked him if he'd seen their friend. At last report, Tyler had left the warehouse with Caitlin Summers, one of the artsy types who'd worked on the decorations; Brandon assumed they were going off to get romantic in some private spot. Jasmine bet that *Caitlin* wasn't wearing any anti-surveillance devices, and set to work locating *her*. That didn't take long, and Jasmine stomped out onto the lawn to recover her man. When she got within earshot, though, she quickly realized that Tyler and Caitlin weren't making out. From what she overheard, it seemed Caitlin was on the verge of suicide over a possible pregnancy, and Tyler was counseling her. Figuring that doing the uplifting side of Euthanatos duty for awhile might actually improve Tyler's mood, Jasmine left him to his work and returned to her post.

Inside the haunted house, Ivan and the rest of the staff were quietly hustling guests through and into the party while continuing to look for new manifestations. Shannon had found a couple of mischievous younger ghosts playing *some* of the pranks, but didn't think that was the whole story. However, soon they'd have the last of the stragglers out of the place, and could tear it apart if necessary looking for the parties responsible. Jasmine's cameras located the last few guests, and Ivan went to collect them. As luck would have it, he came across the chainsaw killer again. Not sure, after the "bobcat," if the guy could hurt him or not, Ivan pulled down knowledge of kung fu from the collective unconscious and engaged the maniac in combat. Unfortunately, his body wasn't prepared to *do* the moves he'd suddenly learned, and he wound up pulling a groin muscle while trying a leg sweep. Dampening the pain with mental magick, he narrowly avoided a swipe of the chainsaw and readied himself -- a little unsteady on his feet now -- for another attack.

Meanwhile, Jasmine was monitoring the evacuation when her screen suddenly went black. Try as she might, she couldn't reestablish the surveillance. With a sigh, she slung her laptop over her shoulder and headed into the haunted house proper to locate her cohorts. She didn't get far, though, before a raggedy old man blocked the corridor in front of her. "Want some candy, little girl?" he rasped. Obviously this was another manifestation of whatever was going on. Shrinking back against the wall, Jasmine waited for the old man to reach for her, and then head-butted him on the point of the chin. Unfortunately, that only made him angry, and with a single look he physically froze her to the spot. Cooing that she'd make a lovely addition to his "candy collection," he picked her up and headed for the exit.

Elsewhere, Ivan was facing off against the chainsaw killer when it suddenly vanished. Mel came in a moment later to report that all the guests were safely dancin' and drinkin' at the party. She hadn't found Jasmine in the staff area, though, and wondered where the other girl was. Opening his empathic senses, Ivan felt one last strobing pulse of fear from within the haunted house. He and Mel headed in that direction. They came upon the old man and Jasmine just inside the front entrance. Mel warned Ivan that the intruder had the aura of a mage. Realizing he'd been caught, the old man hastened to set his captive down and confront the new threat -- whereupon Ivan zapped him with a burst of concentrated static electricity from the air. He was floored but not out, and began weaving another magick. Feeling entropic energies building, and not wanting to find out the nature of this new spell the hard way, Ivan called upon his kung-fu skills again and delivered a flying kick to the guy's face. This time the old man went down and stayed down.

A search of the inert intruder turned up neither weapons nor identification. Mel summoned Tyler for possible execution duty, and took his place counseling Caitlin. Jasmine remembered the guy's talk about his "collection," and feared there were other victims to be rescued. The kids once again called on Mia Walters, who was starting to get a history of coming in on the tail end of the youngsters' adventures. Mia went through the guy's mind with a fine-tooth comb, and learned that he was a Marauder and killer of small children. His regular tours of the country brought him to this warehouse every Halloween. (Ivan began to realize *why* the place hadn't been rented out the week before Halloween.) Unfortunately, all of his previous young victims were dead. Mia saved Tyler the trouble of having to kill the guy by agreeing to take him back with her, to be dealt with as seemed appropriate.

That taken care of, the kids finally got to attend their own Halloween party. Unable to get the "bobcat" blood out of his tux, Ivan changed into the biker leathers from the U-Stor-It, and spent the entire night putting on an outrageous accent and amusing Melanie with overdone attempts to get her to walk on the wild side. This was particularly funny since Mel was costumed as Dorothy from _The Wizard of Oz_. Jasmine, dressed as Wednesday Addams, cast a disapproving eye upon Tyler, dressed as The Shadow, who insisted that he'd had another "rough night" and needed to get drunk again. (In fact, though none of the other characters knows this yet, Tyler had discovered that Caitlin *was* pregnant, and had magickally induced a miscarriage to take care of her problem, which left him feeling sufficiently squicky that the bottle called to him again.) Simon drank again too, and Ivan noticed him actually planting a smooch on Mary. He made a mental note to buy the boy condoms, just in case, because the thought of Simon and Mary's spawn terrified him.

Once the party had ended, the most sober members of the gang did their best to herd everyone back onto the hotel bus and sneak them back into the dorms without raising the alarm. Fortunately it was the weekend, so that wasn't hard. Only on Monday would they learn how much had been observed.

The next day, Halloween proper, everyone was hung over yet again. Well, most everyone. Ivan was fairly OK as before, and was again tormenting everyone in a booming voice. Corinna seemed to have mastered some of the same techniques, and the two delighted in trying to spark agony in each other. Tyler looked surprisingly good, as though he was starting to get accustomed to the sauce (a fact which didn't please Jasmine any). He also had an announcement to make. During the first week of winter break in December, his mom would be going to Paris for a fashion show. He was supposed to go along, as was Mel, who would be doing her first big modeling job at the show. Apparently Ryan had decided that the kids might as well bring as many of their friends as wanted to come, and make a vacation out of it. Naturally, most everyone was eager to sign on.

After breakfast, Jasmine got a surprise when Brandon pulled her aside for a talk. Though they were both officially listed as Tyler's best friends, they had never liked each other much. But now, apparently, Tyler was having a problem of sufficient magnitude that Brandon wanted to leave no avenue unexplored. It seemed that Tyler had been drinking a lot more than at the two parties; in fact, he kept a bottle of Scotch under his bed. He would also turn up with mysterious bruises that he refused to explain. And of course, since returning to school from his harrowing trip home, he'd been moody, sullen, and bad-tempered. Jasmine thanked Brandon for the info, and promised to see what she could do.

Deciding to take the direct approach, Jasmine teleported Tyler's clandestine booze into *her* room, and then quietly waited for him to show up demanding it back. He appeared on cue, but not with the reaction she'd expected. Almost nonchalantly, he explained that during his trip home he'd learned to fear himself, a terror far worse than his old nightmares of the afterlife. His "wrestling with his inner demons" had at times become almost literal, leading him to thrash around in his sleep and incur the bruises Brandon had mentioned. The alcohol was the only thing that seemed to help. But if it was going to make Jasmine mad, he would simply stop drinking. In fact, he'd call her the next time he felt the urge. His quick, facile agreement made Jasmine suspicious, but he insisted that he had an appointment with someone else and couldn't stick around, so that was all she was gonna get.

Jasmine then went to talk to Ivan, securing his promise not to condone any more drinking on Tyler's part. Ivan insisted, however, that the drinking was only one small part of a larger problem: something inside Tyler was making a choice between life and death. While he wasn't actively suicidal, he hadn't yet gotten the impetus to grasp at life, and so was killing himself slowly while numbing himself to the reality of his situation as much as possible. Somehow, Tyler's friends needed to help him get over his basic self-loathing and learn to like himself, and then things like alcohol wouldn't pose a problem. Did Ivan have a plan for dealing with this problem? Actually, yes. However, his first proposal -- to tie a bungee cord around Tyler's legs and push him off the clock tower in an attempt to put the fear of death into him -- didn't meet with Jasmine's approval. His next plan, though, was pure genius: Pull a "Scrooge" and set up some way to show Tyler a convincing vision of the unpleasant future that awaits him if he continues along his present path. *How* to pull that off remained a mystery, but Ivan figured they should save the plan for Christmas anyway, which would give them a good two months to sweat the details.

At that point, Nate came by to remind Ivan that it was against the rules to have members of the opposite sex -- even nine-year-olds -- in one's room with the door closed. Jasmine decided to go ahead and leave. On her way out, she saw Nate knocking on Tyler's door to deliver a similar warning. Turned out he was in there with Caitlin Summers, both of them talking and laughing as though neither had a care in the world. Taking a mental sledgehammer to the wave of jealousy that immediately rose up, Jasmine reminded herself that helping Caitlin was *good* for Tyler, and took her leave.

That's all for this time. Next time . . . Tyler may get that "Scrooge" experience sooner than Ivan planned -- and he won't be the only one! Those of you to whom I've mentioned some future proposed storylines should recognize what's coming. Join us in seven. . . .