Chapter 273: Book 4 Chapter 35: Psychological Warfare

“Wow,” Kraid said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you genuinely mad.”

Over the years, Kraid had frustrated, aggravated, and annoyed Vell in a lot of different ways, but Vell had never gotten truly angry. Now, though, with Kraid standing in Professor Nguyen’s classroom, leaning a skeletal arm against Professor Nguyen’s podium, Vell Harlan looked like he was inches away from murder.

Kraid loved it.

“You should be thanking me, Harlan,” Kraid said. “I heard you had a rough time with this.”

Vell stepped forward, still glaring death at Kraid.

“Get out.”

Kraid stepped forward as well, matching his own cocksure green glare with Vell’s murderous intent.

“Or what?” Kraid said. His skin shimmered with a brief flicker of green-black energy, a not so subtle reminder of the many protective spells he had cast on himself.

Any further murderous intent between the two was stymied by the arrival of Dean Lichman. He saw the name written on the board and put two and two together quickly enough.

“Oh no, absolutely not,” Dean Lichman said. “Get out of my school.”

“Unfortunately for the both of you, I work here now,” Kraid said. He stepped back to Professor Nguyen’s lecture podium and leaned on it far too casually. “I was handpicked by the Board of Directors. That’s above even your pay grade, Lichman.”

Dean Lichman mustered a look of defiance on his face, but didn’t have much else to work with. Vell turned around to face him, and nodded. Dean Lichman nodded right back.

“If you’re sure, Vell,” Dean Lichman said. Vell nodded again. “Very well. I’ll be looking into the terms of your employment here, and in the meantime, Kraid, Vell will continue in his role as a teacher’s aid. For you.”

“Excellent, I could use the help,” Kraid said. “I lied about more than my name on that resume, I don’t actually know much about runes.”

Dean Lichman reluctantly left the room, and Kraid and Vell found themselves alone again -if only briefly. The first class of the day was about to start. The first group of students stepped through the door, saw Kraid in the classroom, and stepped right back out. Vell could hear a commotion starting outside the doors as prospective students wondered why there was a supervillain in their classroom.

“Whatever you want out of this, you’re not going to get it,” Vell said.

“I already got it, kiddo,” Kraid said. “I’m just here to ruin your day.”

“No you’re not.”

“Well, I’m also here to desecrate the memory of a dead woman,” Kraid said. Vell looked about ready to shoot him, which Kraid enjoyed. “And to teach some classes, of course.”

The first curious students worked up the courage to poke their heads inside the classroom again. Kraid waved them inside.

“Come on, come on, I want to get classes started.”

A few of the students wisely fled, but a few more were too stressed about their finals to skip a class, even a class taught by the world’s most famous murderer. Students filed in slowly and cautiously, though the classroom was only half as full as usual by the time the doors closed for the last time.

“Excellent. Now, as you all no doubt know, I’m Alistair Kraid, and I’ll be teaching you for the next few days,” Kraid said. “We can get started as soon as my assistant fetches my teaching materials.”

Kraid glared at Vell, who reached into his bag and handed over the day’s lesson plans. Kraid took the papers and promptly threw them on the floor.

“Not those lesson plans,” Kraid said, as Vell clenched his fist. “I’ve prepared an improved version of the lessons from Professor What’s-Her-Name. The files are on a laptop in my office.”

The words ‘my office’ made Vell’s eyebrows twitch. Kraid mocked him with a smile.

“Be a dear and go fetch the laptop, would you?”

“Sure. One second.”

Vell stepped into the office and slammed the door behind him. Kraid and the students heard the sound of something being thrown on the floor, then at a wall, then being stomped on several times, then a cacophony of slamming noises, a blender being turned on, thirty-six gunshots, a small explosion, and a heavy thud followed by what sounded like the confused snorting of a rhinoceros. The room fell silent once again, and Vell walked out holding a pile of plastic shards, which he dumped at Kraid’s feet.

“I dropped it.”

Kraid looked down at the pile of laptop shards. When he looked up, Vell was holding out Professor Nguyen’s lesson plans again. This time, Kraid took them in hand and set them on fire.

“Oops,” Kraid said. “Alright, since I’ll have to work without a guide.”

The chalk floated back into Kraid’s hands, and he turned to the blackboard to begin drawing a typical hexagonal shape, the usual form of a rune. Then he drew a single line, perfectly straight from top to bottom.

“This is the ‘order’ line, the central point from which every other rune is built,” Kraid said. “Since every rune is rooted in perfect order, you need to be very precise about the length and depth of every cut to ensure proper function of the rune.”

The students took no notes, nor did they ask any questions, as Kraid continued. A few of them cast nervous glances at Vell, and those glances only got more nervous when they noticed how pissed off Vell looked. Kraid was rehashing the absolute basics of runecarving -the things most people learned in middle school, if not earlier. It was less than useless for students of their caliber.

On the sidelines of the pointless lesson, Vell stewed in his own rage -and started to plan.

***

“Obviously there’s no way in hell we can chase him off with force,” Vell said.

“Isn’t there?” Alex said. “Kim managed to hurt him-”

“Once,” Kim interrupted. Kraid had never accounted for the possibility that a robot could use magic, so he had not protected himself against it. He had since corrected the oversight.

“I know, but there’s got to be something else on the same level of impossibility,” Alex said. “We have access to alternate dimensions and time travel and ghosts, surely there’s some combination of factors that Kraid hasn’t accounted for?”

“It’s possible, but even if there is, how would we use it?” Vell said. “If we found it, we’d either have to threaten Kraid with it, in which case he’d just build a defense against it, or we’d have to actually kill him with it, which isn’t on the table.”

“Is killing him not on the table?” Hawke asked. “I feel like killing him is one-hundred percent on the table.”

“Morally yes, practically no,” Vell said. “If we try something and it doesn’t work, he retaliates and kills us. If we use the first loop to experiment, Helena just warns him about whatever we try.”

“We could-”

“If we kill Helena, Kraid knows we’re up to something,” Vell said. “Also, significantly less morally comfortable with killing Helena.”

“Shame she doesn’t feel that way about you,” Samson scoffed. “Alright, so physical force is a no-go, then that leaves us with mental force.”

“So we’re fucked,” Kim said.

“Nobody likes a pessimist, Kim,” Vell said. “Kraid’s probably smarter than any one of us, yeah, but our advantage is that there’s not just one of us. If we all do something different and get our friends to pitch in, we can overwhelm him with numbers. We might not stop whatever Kraid’s planning, but we can at least annoy the hell out of him.”

“I’ll take it,” Samson said. “I know just who to call.”

***

“Ibrahim!”

“Hey, Samson,” Ibrahim said. The distant twin kicked his feet up and relaxed. “What’s happening? How’s studying for finals going?”

“Going incredibly stressful, bro, you know how it is,” Samson said. “And it gets worse: there’s a homicidal maniac trying to play professor.”

“Oh, let me guess, Kraid’s still on his bullshit?”

“I’m not sure it’s possible for Kraid to be off his bullshit,” Samson said. “But we’re going to do our best to throw him off. That’s where you come in.”

“Not that I’m not excited to give Kraid some payback,” Ibrahim began. Kraid’s machinations were no small part of why he no longer went to school with his twin. “But what the fuck can I do? I’m like three-thousand miles away.”

“Yeah, that’s the point,” Samson said. “Kraid’s got all kinds of magic bullshit he can do up close, he’s got to put way more effort into things messing with him from far away.”

“Hmm. I suppose I could mess with him a bit,” Ibrahim said. He’d been looking into cybersecurity lately. Certainly not enough to singlehandedly defeat Kraid, but enough to annoy him. Maybe even aggravate, if he was lucky.

“That’s all we need,” Samson said. “Just a bunch of little annoyances that’ll hopefully add up to one big pain in the ass for Kraid.”

“Okay. Just...be careful, Sammie,” Ibrahim said. “You’re the one at ground zero of Kraid getting pissed off.”

“I’ll be fine,” Samson said.

“That didn’t sound very convincing,” Ibrahim said.

“Okay, yeah, very real possibility I will not be fine,” Samson admitted. “But I have to do what I have to do. Not to get dramatic, Ibs, but things are getting serious. I think we might be headed towards the end.”

Samson looked to his left, at a swarm of purple butterflies flocking around the walls and windows of the marine biology department. There had always been a few following Vell, appearing every few days and then flitting away, but over the past year their careful stalking had gotten more intense, and more thorough. They now followed Vell so closely and in such numbers that you could tell what building Vell was in just by looking for the butterflies.

“Things are getting weirder,” Samson said. “A lot weirder.”

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“That’s possible?”

“Always,” Samson sighed. “Whatever happens, I’m not half-assing things. I’m all in. Even for something as dumb as pestering Kraid with spam emails.”

“Then I’m all in too,” Ibrahim said. “Even if I am three thousand miles away.”

“Thanks. I’ll talk to you again after I’ve saved the world,” Samson said. “Or done something really dumb trying.”

“Hey, give yourself more credit,” Ibrahim said. “You’ll do something really dumb succeeding.”

***

“Okay, I’m kind of scared to check in, but let’s see what you’ve got,” Vell said.

“Why are you scared?” Skye said, her offense obvious.

“I called and asked you if you had a way to mess with Kraid and you laughed maniacally for a solid minute,” Vell said.

“It’s in my DNA,” Skye said. “Actual thing, by the way, I can show you the genome if you want.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Vell said. “So what’ve you got?”

Skye moved away from her desk, towards the back of the Marine Biology lab. With a dramatic flourish, she plugged her nose and swept open the door to a refrigerated storage room. Vell was immediately struck by the unmistakable and unfortunately familiar scent of frozen fish meat.

“Eighty-seven gallons of chum.”

“Cool, please close the door, I hate that smell,” Vell said. Skye slammed the door shut.

“All of our experiments that require bait are done with, and this doesn’t keep until next year anyway,” Skye said. “We have carte blanche to dispose of it as we see fit, and rather than repeat last year’s chum golem incident-”

“Thank you for that.”

“-I propose that we dispose of this garbage in Kraid’s direction.”

“Alright, so you just want to what, dump it all on him while he walks to class or something?”

“Vell Harlan,” Skye scoffed. “Are we cavemen? Have we no wit? No subtlety?”

Vell Harlan had met some pretty witty cavemen, but Skye did not and could not know that. He assumed she had some other point she wanted to make, and let her continue.

“We’re not going to dump it all over him like savages,” Skye said. “We’re going to get nanobots and hide tiny little chunks of it everywhere he lives and in everything he owns. Thousands of teeny-tiny pieces of rotting fish threaded into all the seams of his clothes, tucked into every corner of his room and every fold of his bed. He’ll never be able to escape it, and he’ll never be able to find it all.”

“That is borderline chemical warfare,” Vell said, equal parts impressed and horrified. “I’m sure glad I’m in love with you, because if I weren’t you’d be fucking terrifying.”

“I’m still terrifying, baby,” Skye said. She gave him a quick kiss and immediately regretted it. “Hmm. Should’ve moved farther away from the rotting fish locker.”

“Yeah, it kind of hangs in the air, doesn’t it?”

***

The room was abuzz with energy as the Theoretical Science division prepared their final projects. Given the unconventional nature of their department, written tests and thesis presentations did not work quite as well for grading purposes. Freddy and his fellow senior scientists were putting together much more tangible presentations for the final projects. Strange machines and jury-rigged prototypes for inexplicable inventions flickered and rumbled in every corner of the room. Alex dodged and weaved between the various build sites until she found Freddy hard at work in his own corner of the room, with Goldie working nearby.

“Hey, fuzzy.”

Freddy looked up from his project and lifted his goggles.

“‘Fuzzy’?”

“It’s a pet name. I was trying to be cute,” Alex squeaked. “Did it not work?”

“It was a little strained,” Freddy said. He could hear Goldie chuckling at him. “But we can work on it. Just got to get used to it!”

“Right, of course,” Alex said. She cleared her throat. “Back to business. Do you have anything for Operation Annoy Kraid? I heard Skye laughing maniacally over the phone earlier, so I think she’s bringing the big guns. We can’t get upstaged.”

“Ah, yes, I have just the thing,” Freddy said. “And it overlaps perfectly with my final project: the micro-portal generator!”

Freddy lifted up the handheld device he was working on to show it off, then pushed two buttons on the central console. Two small portals appeared in the air in front of him, each about the size of a quarter. After taking some measurements to ensure everything was stable, Freddy pushed a pen through one portal and watched it slide out the other.

“Very impressive,” Alex said. Any kind of stable portal usually required a much larger generator.

“Well, wait one second…”

Freddy held up a hand and stared intently at the pen. After a short delay, he poked it with another pen.

“Okay, the pen didn’t dissolve,” Freddy said. “Now it’s impressive.”

“I’m glad I resisted the urge to stick my finger through the portal,” Alex said.

“Yeah, that’d be the smart approach,” Freddy said. “Wouldn’t it, Goldie?”

“It grew back!”

“Only because we have a dedicated finger regenerator,” Freddy said. “Anyway, I think I know a way to use this to bother Kraid. Are you familiar with the cricket incident?”

“Of course,” Alex said. Vell’s eye still twitched whenever he heard a cricket chirp.

“Well it’s time for payback,” Freddy said. “Ballistic projectiles and high-energy attacks would bounce right off Kraid’s defenses, but if his shields blocked soundwaves in the average audible range, he wouldn’t be able to hear.”

“So we use the portals to beam annoying but harmless sounds directly at him,” Alex said. “Disruptive and karmic. I like it. Excellent work, fuzzy.”

“Okay no I don’t think that’s going to work,” Freddy said.

“The portals?”

“No, you calling me ‘fuzzy’,” Freddy said. Goldie nodded in agreement.

“You two are embarrassing enough without throwing cutesy nicknames around,” Goldie said. “Stick to awkwardly mumbling around each other.”

“We don’t do that,” Freddy mumbled awkwardly.

***

Vell met the group at their usual dining spot, though at an unusual time. They typically met here for breakfast or lunch, not dinner.

“Evening, Kim,” Vell said. “Have you seen Hawke?”

“Nah, he’s up to something,” Kim said. “Contributing to the war effort, probably.”

“Hope he’s got something good,” Samson said. “Speaking of, what are you bringing to the table, Kim?”

“I’m spoofing the phone numbers of important business contacts to pester him with calls,” Kim said. “He can’t ignore me without risking missing an important call, and every time he answers-”

Kim primed her speakers and played a long, drawn out fart sound effect.

“Classy.”

“I’m not here to be classy, I’m here to be a shithead,” Kim said.

“Every little bit helps,” Vell said. “Kraid’s body might be invincible, but we can sure as hell wage war on his mind.”

“Assuming he has any sanity left, this should stress it,” Alex said.

“For sure,” Vell said. “We can kick Alex and Freddy’s plan off tomorrow, then Kim’s the day after, and so on and so forth.”

“What?”

Vell looked up from his dinner, at his friends.

“To stagger things out,” Vell said. “You know, shake things up. Mix up the distractions so they’re more annoying and unexpected.”

“Oh.”

Kim, Samson, and Alex all looked between each other for confirmation they had made the same mistake.

“We just sort of did them.”

“All at once?”

“Yeah, all at once,” Kim said. “Why wouldn’t we?”

The glass wall of the dining hall broke open in a shower of glass. As jagged shards rained down on all sides, students ducked for cover or ran, and Alistair Kraid stomped through the storm of glass. He smelled like rotten fish, his eyes were twitching, and his skeletal hand clutched a phone that was still vibrating constantly.

“You.”

“Hey, Kraid,” Vell said. “I see you got really pissed off. All at once.”

“Hi, Harlan, one second,” Kraid said. He looked over his shoulder. Helena was standing outside, across the field of broken glass, and she gave him a single nod. “Oh, good.”

Vell and company got to see about zero-point-three seconds of Kraid pointing a finger at them before everything went black.

***

“That was my bad,” Vell said. “I should’ve been more specific.”

“Vell, that was not your fault,” Kim said. “We absolutely jumped the gun.”

“I should’ve explained the plan better, at least,” Vell said. He was still mentally exhausted from trying to teach, and apparently that was making him forgetful.

“It’s not a complete bust,” Alex said. “We still know how to make Kraid mad. Maybe we just scale it back a little for the real deal?”

“No, Helena will have warned him about everything we try to pull,” Vell said. “That’s why I wanted to stagger things out, maybe swap days to keep him off guard.”

“Shit,” Alex said.

“Hey, it’s not the end of the world,” Samson said.

“It sort of was,” Kim added. They were assuming Kraid obliterating them counted as the daily apocalypse, at least. There were no signs of any other incidents thus far.

“I mean we’ve still got something to work with,” Samson said. “Hawke hasn’t done anything yet.”

“That’s true,” Vell said. “Where is that guy anyway? He hasn’t so much as texted.”

“He may very well be hiding from Kraid,” Alex said. “I should clarify that’s not a jab at his cowardice, I also plan on avoiding Kraid next time we see him.”

“Perfectly understandable, yeah,” Vell said.

“I just messaged him, he says he’s working on something,” Kim said. “We could head over and check it out, apparently.”

“What’s such a big deal he wants to show it off in person?”

“Must be something good,” Samson said. “Come on, let’s check it out.”

Samson was first out the door, but Kim led the way to the Hawke’s dorm. Thanks to some light favoritism from Dean Lichman, Hawke had been given a dorm in the furthest reaches of the island, far away from potential havoc. In theory, at least. Hawke’s dorm building had been ground zero for seven disasters so far this year. Kim made sure to knock on the door with a light tap, lest Hawke think he was going to get trampled by a robot cow again.

“Come on in,” Hawke said. “We were just finishing up.”

Due to its remote location (and Hawke’s own introversion), he did not play host often, so Samson and Alex were seeing his dorm for the first time. It was more decorated than either had been expecting, with walls dominated by lots of landscape pictures from New Zealand, as well as photographs of tattooed men and women they could only assume to be Hawke’s family members.

The homey environment of the dorm was enhanced by an array of snacks and drinks that had been laid out well in advance, and already picked at by some previously arrived guests. Alex took a quick step behind Samson to evade Isabel’s attention, and tried to keep her focus on Joan and Amy instead. All three of the women had gathered around Hawke for as-yet-unknown reasons.

“Oh, the rune experts,” Samson said. “What’re you cooking? Rune sequence that’ll make Kraid’s blood explode?”

“No, Samson,” Isabel said. “That’s impossible.”

Vell tried not to make a face. He failed.

“Vell,” Isabel squeaked. “That’s impossible, right?”

“Theoretically, you could...that’s not important right now,” Vell said. “What are you all doing here, then?”

“Getting bribed by Hawke, mostly,” Amy said. She grabbed another cookie off the tray before anyone else could pick at Hawke’s snacks.

“I don’t really feel like poking the bull, so to speak,” Hawke said. He was mortally terrified of Kraid for numerous and correct reasons. “So I thought I’d maybe approach things from the other angle. Stop him from ruining your life without screwing over the other rune students in the process.”

Hawke had actually been working on the plan while Vell had been running himself ragged trying to be a teacher, but it was also a good solution to the Kraid problem. He gestured to his left and right at some of Vell’s friends and peers in runecarving.

“I got the first years, Isabel will take second, Amy’s handling the third, and, well, you’re still probably the only guy smart enough to handle the other seniors,” Joan explained. “But that’s still seventy-five percent less bullshit on your plate.”

“Maybe sixty percent,” Isabel said. “I’m still going to need some help with lessons and stuff.”

“We could pick over percentages all day,” Alex said. “Point is we have a plan. Kraid doesn’t get to screw us and Vell doesn’t have to break his back trying to play professor.”

“Well, that’s...probably a better plan than just screwing with Kraid and hoping for the best,” Vell admitted. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Because you’re a naturally self-sacrificial son of a bitch,” Amy said.

“You’re also being personally antagonized by a supervillain,” Joan said.

“And you haven’t had a good night’s sleep in three days,” Isabel concluded.

“All correct,” Vell said. “Mind if we change the subject from my list of woes?”

“You have a long list, Vell,” Isabel said. “But yeah. We should probably talk about lessons and stuff.”

Vell took a seat, and they began to talk about lessons and stuff. It was a surprisingly short conversation. Hawke had given the three new recruits a good primer, which only left Vell to fill in the gaps of the information they’d need and the schedules they had to work on.

“Our biggest logistical problem is going to be finding somewhere for all these students to get together,” Joan said. “Kraid’s going to be monopolizing the classroom for sure.”

“Worst case scenario, we can always have class on the quad,” Isabel said. “Not like the weather’s ever bad here.”

“And where are two hundred students going to sit, Izzy?” Amy asked. “In the dirt?”

“I don’t know, I assume Vell knows where to get two hundred spare desks,” Isabel said.

“That’s a weird thing to assume,” Vell said. “But also: yes. I can start hauling them-”

“You can sit around while other people haul them, Vell,” Joan said.

“Right. Self-sacrificial son of a bitch,” Vell mumbled. “Thanks. I owe you all big time.”

His friends unanimously shrugged off the idea that Vell owed them anything, and after a few more questions about logistics, set off to start wrangling the wayward rune students. Vell said his goodbyes and stayed behind with the loopers for just a moment longer. They took a seat and finished off the snacks Hawke had set out.

“Good thinking, Hawke,” Vell said. “I really should’ve tried to set up something like that sooner.”

“I appreciate you trying to help people all the time, Vell,” Hawke said. “But you’ve really got to remember that other people can help too.”

“Hey, I got help from other people,” Vell said. “I just got help harassing a supervillain. Instead of the normal thing.”

“Well, there’s your problem,” Hawke said. “You’re really good at all this loop stuff, but I think you need to focus on the ‘normal thing’ a little more often.”

“You are one hundred percent correct,” Vell said. “But you’re way better at that than I am. That’s why you’re in charge next year.”

“I’m what?” Hawke said.

“He’s what?” Kim and Samson said simultaneously.

“Oh,” Vell said. “Did I not already mention that?”

He helped himself to another cookie.

“All this stress really is making me forgetful."