CONFRONT Aegidius, +2 BRAVERY, -1 consequence, -10 older brother penalty: 1, 4 - 11 = negative 6, Your enemy thrashes or embarrasses you

Steeling yourself, you take a deep breath and prepare to defend yourself from your elder brother's withering scorn as you walk out after him into the cool night breeze. You almost thought about asking to wait a minute so you don't have to verbally defend yourself from the coming accusation of being a degenerate slut while a mundane's semen is pooling in your panties but you think of that too late.

Aegidius clears his throat and claps his hands softly before speaking in German: "So Franziska. About the good news I was mentioning when I came in. It shall allow me to move our timetable up slightly and lessen the time we all need to spend in this polluted mundane metropolis. The local ministry office has reached a final accord with the gifted child's parents and confirmed my request to move forward. Surveillance has been arranged, and the girl can now be returned to her birth home, for the time being, until the family relocates. There is a mechanized carriage coming to the rear of the house in the next half hour. Furthermore, there are no less than two promising candidates which my other contact, at the city warehouse district, has notified me of, which we will be able to examine as early as tomorrow morning."

You stare defiantly at him waiting for the other shoe to drop as he continues. "If even one is genuine we will have filled our quota. My superiors will be pleased, and I shall consider your debt for forcing me to fly in and bail you out to be fully repaid. However, the location we are traveling to tomorrow is considerably more dangerous than even the House of Neiman Marcus. The mundanes there are particularly savage, so you will all need to be on your guard."

He looks down at his pocketwatch. "When the mechanized carriage arrives, conjure a cloud of fog so that I can transmute a hole in the wall to remove the gifted child without raising the suspicion of Herr Ralph or his friends. It is better if we move quickly once the transport arrives, so you should wait out here with me until it arrives. Then get some rest and stay sharp for tomorrow. If things go awry there may even be a need to defend ourselves. You always did like fighting, didn't you?" he chuckles softly... his voice is warmer than before, but also condescending. "Do you still carry that shrunken saber around, that you used to dispatch the shadow elves? I did not want to say so in front of the Headmistress, but I was proud to hear you fought so fiercely."

Aegidius looks back towards the house. "That is part of why I asked you out here, in fact. Milly Cherrywood dealt with some of the elves as well, yes?"

"Yes..." you say suspiciously.

"Mmm," Aegidius says. "Do you think she would be suitable as an agent of one of the ministries? Assuming her family would allow her to stay on this side of the Atlantic, of course. Have you ever dueled her yourself, or seen her duel? Tell me about her fighting style."

"STOP!" you stamp your foot a little childishly. "Stop stringing me along! Say what you are going to say already!"

A frown starts spreading across Aegidius's neutral expression. "And what would that be?" he grunts.

"You just saw me... like that. After I had just..." your pale, freckled cheeks burn hot. "...with that man, on the couch. What are you going to do to me? What are you going to do to HIM?"

For a few seconds, Aegidius is silent. "Perhaps a rhetorical question as to how long you expected me to be gone? I was away for nearly two hours, as it was. Ahhhhh." he nods a few times. "Now I understand. I did not realize it at the time, but you asked your friend Miss Collier to fling herself at me, as she did, so that she would delay my return by a few hours more. Hm." he strokes his beard and seems mildly amused, if anything. "I can see that you wanted to avoid the awkward implication by simply asking me to take my time coming back. But that attempt at avoiding awkwardness did not work so well for either of us, did it?"

Your jaw drops open in shock. "But, Jerry - th.. the man on the couch. He's a MUNDANE, you know! A magic-less user of foul and barbaric technologies! You have ranted about how much you hate them at every Christmas dinner for as long as I can remember, now matter how many times mutti politely asks you if you 'think you've had enough beer for one night'!"

"Then I suppose I speak clumsily when I've had too many beers, then." Aegidius says with his usual infuriating, superior facade. The untouchable super-man who brushes you off his robes like a speck of dust every time you try to challenge him on ANYTHING. He continues: "I hate mundanes collectively, Franziska, not as individuals. I hate the city. I do not hate the man living in it. To do so would be petty, foolish, and counterproductive."

Aegidius starts monologuing, pontificating with his hands as if he is standing on a stage. "Mundanes are simply humans deprived of magic. Their depravity is the result of that, not the cause of it. They are wicked because they lack magic, they do not lack because they are wicked. In fact their bloodlines often have powerful strains of magical talent laying dormant, just looking for the right opportunity to express. Most of the greatest magicians of all time were, in fact, mundaneborn. That girl you helped me discover could be a Headmistress of Boarbristle, some day."

You stare at Aegidius in mute annoyance, slumping your shoulders childishly, as he rambles: "My life's purpose is in helping them become something better than they are. That is why I help men like this, in many cities, to build their fortune and advance to the top of mundane society. If the best among them, such as Ralph, can be elevated to positions of power, the cruelty and senselessness of mundane civilization may, meter by meter, be ameliorated..."

"What is the point of ANY of this? " you shout, face reddened. You feel your eyes welling up with tears. "I'm, I was..." you gulp. "It was something very intimate. And it didn't go as I planned. Milly was using a wand to change her voice so we were already suspicious, and... and Kinzie tried to cast a spell on me and then dropped her wand, so I thought we needed to distract them somehow... And they started complimenting me and comparing them to their famous dancers... And you don't care? You don't care at all that I was taken advantage of right under your nose, that they would disrespect you that way? You saw how they were reacting! Jerry thought you were going to kill him!"

"This is exactly the kind of scene I was trying to avoid, Franzi." Aegidius says, always ready with the droll response. "Being complimented is not what most people mean when they speak of 'being taken advantage of', sexually. I can assure you, with complete sincerity," Aegidius puts his hand over his heart, "if I had walked in and you were sobbing and beaten bloody, that pudgy mundane you were with on the couch would be choking on his own intestines right now."

You lurch, taken aback by Aeddi's gruesome imagery in so calm a tone of voice. He continues impassively: "You are my dear little sister and I would kill any man who harmed you in such a way. But should I really worry about such things? You had a wand. You were in no danger from those men, Franziska. Kinzie might have COMMAND-ed you, but I saw that her wand was under the couch, out of her reach. Why are you being so emotional about this?"

"WHY ARE YOU BENG SO UNEMOTIONAL ABOUT IT, YOU MOUNTAIN TROLL?!" you run up and start beating your tiny fists against the huge man's chest. He makes no move to defend himself - this is a man who lifts 100 kilogram stones without magic as part of his rock-gardening hobby. A sub-five-foot-tall waif hitting him may as well be hitting a tree trunk.

You swallow, tears welling up still. "Well... well how about this? Kinzie spitefully sabotaged the sheaths the mundanes used, since YOU wouldn't let us bring any potions with us! The protection failed. I might..." your throat tightens and your voice cracks as you finally break eye contact with him, "I might get pregnant. All of us might. We didn't notice until it was too late." you pause awkwardly. "Except for Milly. She didn't even bother with the sheath, foolish girl."

Aegidius's mouth twitches a little. An enigmatic rumble comes up from his throat, but his mouth remains closed. After a long, awkward pause, he finally speaks. "Franziska, were you really so determined to get a reaction out of me that you'd possibly burden yourself with a child? The last time father asked you about it, back in July, you said you didn't plan on having a baby anytime soon. Is this your final ploy for attention, now that I've moved to block your attempts at upsetting our parents by organizing outdoor orgies and the like?"

Your eyes open wide and you gasp, infuriated and scandalized. Aegidius continues: "I know that Kinzie is not the most pleasant young woman, but you antagonized her first. Sabotaging her contraceptives too while you're at it is a wildly inappropriate way to deal with her. Or perhaps this is the culmination of a long-running feud. Ach... Schoolgirls and their feuds."

"NO FUCKING WAY!" you start speaking English again. Or, rather, you start screaming your head off in English: "YOU THINK I PUT HOLES IN ZE... RUBBER THINGS? ON PURPOSE?!"

"Of course." Aegidius says confidently. "It is classic 'middle child syndrome'. I know we can't see ourselves as others see us, but I must tell you, Franziska - the way you've always been acting out to get mother and father to pay more attention to you is quite stereotypical. I would wager that a solid sixty percent of 'Boarbristle Bastards' have melodramatic middle children for mothers, fathers, or both."

For long moments, you are quiet, able to hear nothing but your heart beating furiously in your ears and the rumble of distant traffic. Your nostrils flare as you breathe in and out deeply, your face trembling like an alchemical pressure vessel near the point of bursting.

"Bring out your staff!" you shriek at Aegidius. With your lips pouting viciously, you pull your wand out of your sleeve and point it at him. "Defend yourself, Aegidius!"

"What are you doing, sister?" Aegidius asks in a weary, contemptuous tone. "We are in the middle of a street in a Mundane city, for God's sake. And need I remind you, we have an early morning tomorrow?"

"I CHALLENGE YOU TO A DUEL!" you scream, taking several steps back.

"I decline your challenge." Aegidius says in a calm voice, putting his hands behind his back. "Feel free to tell everyone at the school that you made the powerful Aegidius back down. Consider that my Christmas gift to you - since it sounds like I may need to send the bottle of Riesling I had picked out for you to someone else instead, if you won't be able to drink next year."

Every nerve in your body explodes in anger. You very slowly and deliberately tuck your wand back into its main holster under the hem of your plaid skirt.

"Good." Aegidius says. "Now as I said, try to calm yourself and get some re-AHH!" for the first time tonight his facade of perfect composure cracks as you leap at him.

"I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL KILL YOU, YOU WRETCHED FUCKING OGRE!" your voice is a bloodcurdling shriek as you grab for Aegidius's throat. But you only get a handful of his beard as he puts up his hand.

"GAH!" He shouts in pain as you tear a clump of his beard out. His hand is on your forehead, and he makes a stiff arm, keeping you away from being able to reach him. His arms are so damn long that you can't so much as touch him, so you're left pathetically (and rather comically) clawing the air a few inches away from his chest in blind fury. "Franziska, would you please - oh Gott in Himmel no." Aegidius turns away from you and looks to the side. Your eyes are forced to blink by some flashing lights as a mechanical vehicle shows up.

You pay it little mind, continuing to scream in inchoate fury at your hateful sibling. "DIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

However, after a minute, a bright light shines in your eyes, and a strange, raspy man's voice speaks up. "'Ere now, what's all this then?"