GET OUT OF TROUBLE: 5, miss: 'Detention' (serving as amusement for mundie brats)

2 + 2 + 1 ambition = 5, failure

Unfortunately by the time you are reaching your destination the high of Felice Collier's cathartic breakthrough - with the aid of acrobatic midair cunnilingus - on your feelings is wearing off, and her promises of a future place with her in the drakes seem far away in the face of your current peril. At your elder brother's urging you and the other girls descend through into one of the great swathes of the country that you've always been taught are off limits. When you come up on a layer of some kind of awful toxic fog, you first hold your breath as it makes you feel like you're going to choke, only to discover that it is almsot as thick at the ground level as it was above, so you will just have to endure it, somehow. The source soon becomes clear as you see huge, boxy metal artifices rumbling along broad paths of a strange type of seamless stone, each one of them belching streamers of smoke. Vast, cyclopean structures loom everywhere, all of them studded with incomprehensible metal devices and linked together by a spiderweb of crisscrossing wires.

Shivers run down your spine, and the other girls, even Felice, are likewise silent as Aegidius sternly and wordlessly collects your brooms and hands each of you a small rolled-up parcel of clothes. "If any of you have any, ANY potions, powders, charms, amulets, rings, or other magical items whatsoever, you must make damned well sure you turn them over to me now - because if you are found to have smuggled one along or, God help you, such an item ends up in one of THEIR hands... you will most likely spend the rest of your life in a dungeon cell. For the rest of your time here only your wand may be kept - and you must not use it at all *except* within the confines of that building ahead. Although this should be an entirely safe and secure location, if anyone you do not recognize tries to take your wand away, defend it with any means necessary, including the forbidden spells you are nearly all guilty of knowing. If resistance is impossible, break the wand rather than surrender it."

The tall, grim man whirls his robe dramatically as he points to the massive square building ahead, with strangely dressed people streaming in and out of it and bizarre, luminescent letters hanging over the entrance. "I am sure that many of you will consider what will be asked of you in this place to be undignified. That is certainly true. Yet make no mistake, this is not a mere pretext for punishment, but a vitally important task to keeping our homes and families... indeed, our very world... safe from a monstrous and brutal engine of destruction, a multifarious titan of twisted artifice loose upon the world..."

"Uuuuuuuhhhghhhhh," Kinzie McMullins lets out a lengthy, exasperated and contemptuous groan. "Ahhhh for FUCK's sake you havering continental wankstain! Are you *serious* with all this dramatic pissing about? It's just a stupid mall for rich cockends from south of the Thames! A great big store selling overpriced trash!" She turns on the rest of you, being far too angry to suppress her accent like she usually does and shaking her finger at all the rest of you accusingly. "My pa worked in a place like this when he was growin' up, before he got his talent and came to the academy. He even took me to one, once, though, aye, not near as posh as this one... but... You all go to a school right next to a fookin' forest up to its oxters in vicious, deadly monsters, and you're scared of a place that sells bath salts, GPSes and foot massagers?"

"Wh-what's a gee-pee-ess?" The somewhat hapless flame-haired girl standing behind you asks unsteadily.

Kinzie grits her teeth. "Milly...! Aren't you from across the Atlantic? You of all people ought to kn- GAHH!" Before she can finish responding, Aegidius smashes the end of his staff down on Kinzie's foot. "ACH! SHITE! That fuckin' hurt...!"

"Silence." Aegidius says sternly. "As always, you can see the regrettable consequence of allowing the children of these degenerates," he waves a hand to indicate the strangely-dressed humans flowing through the massive square building's entrances, "into our academies. They are too comfortable around these mechanisms and do not see them for the danger that they are. If you could but see the way that the filthy, diseased hives of humanity that extract the materials for these trinkets live, or witness the vast toxic cauldrons and towering, smoke-belching alembics that heave forth the inventory of such a place as this, you would vomit; if you were to see the great cairns piled high with unfathomable weapons of murder at the command of the princes and potentates that oversee such markets as this, you would faint in terror. If you had been alive to see the apocalyptic terrors that my mother and father witnessed in the shadow of their ancestral castle - terrors they perhaps they would have done better to impress upon their daughters to warn them against frivolity - " he says, glaring at you, to which you respond by sticking out your tongue, "then you would not sleep easy. Now, all of you - strip off your uniforms and put on what I gave you."

"Wha-?" Milly puts her hands to her face and blushes. "But, but Sir Weber! We're standing right in the middle of this wide open patch of stone! We can't... surely...?!"

With a weary sigh, Aegidius yanks off his flowing robe and tosses it to the ground with a single smooth motion. Fortunately, he is wearing skivvies under it, but you make an exaggerated retching sound and put your hands over your eyes all the same. All of the other girls stare and gawk for a moment before looking away, except Felice who giggles and contributes an "Ouuuh la la!" as Aegidius begins pulling on a bright red velvet suit with fur trim around the ankles and cuffs, then placing a floppy red pointed hat with a puffball dangling off the end on his head. "OBVIOUSLY I have had us under a wide-area charm of invisibility, Miss Cherrywood. We cannot very well let the ignorant masses see us flying in on brooms. Only children and the chosen few adults and youths inside the house of Neiman Marcus are allowed to see our arts."

"You just wanted an excuse to show off your high-level magic!" you sneer at him - but he doesn't dignify you with a response. With a sigh, you start unbuttoning your blouse but before you get far, Felice bustles up to you and thrusts her skirt-covered butt up against your side. "Oooh, do help me, would you? It will be more efficient this way. Milly? Could you come over here as well, surely that would make it even more efficient, yes? All three of us helping ourselves undress?"

Aegidius gives Felice a hard, disapproving look as he sees the gorgeous curly-haired witch striking sexy poses as you unzip her skirt and unbutton your blouse. Milly makes a face and turns away from the both of you, flinching and crouching as she disrobes. "What? Ew, you perverted drakes... I don't want another girl pulling my clothes off. I'm a Leontes, I've got standards y'know!"

You blow air as you peel off Felice's blouse and caress her smooth, perfect milky-white skin all the way down to her hips before undoing her skirt, making her shiver (well, that and the fact that it's cold outside). Felice looks over and winks at her. "Really? The way you wear your hair like a boy and never use any makeup, I would have thought you were advertising your adventurousness..."

"Hmph," you add, piling on defensively, "what are you being so prissy for? You accepted when I invited you to an orgy! And you let someone cum inside of you before lunch on your very first day at the school, everyone saw you running to the bath! Why do you think I invited you?"

The cute tall girl with her vivid red pixie cut shakes a hand at you both as if shooing you away. "Stop ganging up on me! You're not in a position to cast judgement on anybody, besides!"

Felice is already whispering in your ear as she shamelessly rubs her hands down your thighs before starting to help you pull on your stockings. You slap her hands weakly and tell her to stop but she isn't listening. "You know that charm spell, right? It's the ones you have to chase who are the most succulent forbidden fruit, yes...?"

Before she gets much further, Aegidius, fully dressed, comes over and swings his staff once again and whacks Felice right on the crown of her head. It's so sudden and disrespectful that you have to stifle a nervous laugh as Felice wails and shakes her head, her confidence suddenly gone. "Y-you... you hit me! You barBARIAN!" she shrills, taking great offense. "I think I will separate you two, for the moment." your brother says icily, menacing her again and driving her back. You feel quite disappointed but avoid his gaze, unwilling to challenge him.

A few minutes later you and the other girls are changed, wearing somewhat risque short green dresses with bells dangling around the collars and striped red-and-white stockings. They don't look like anything to you, though a bit garish, but Kinzie is vocally dismayed, calling them 'Christmas elf' costumes. They are cute and a little sexy, though not tailored tightly enough to be indecent.

"Allow me to explain the first of your labors. There are children in there - the only pure souls in this miasma of mechanized evil you are likely to meet, the offspring of the ruling classes. You will demonstrate some minor cantrips and tricks for them. Show them that magic is possible and make a note of the ones who instinctively try to copy you. If one of them casts what might be a wild spell, you *absolutely must* bring them to me. But be wary, this house has artifacts which may watch your moves, that no scrying spell can detect... and sentinels with strange and terrible weapons who will try to drive us all out if they realize we do not have the writs of authorization from their magistrates. Some parts of the building will be filled with a horrid chemical stench; it is only mildly harmful. Do not let it impede your mission. Once we have finished here, we must all depart separately - and with absolute certainty you are not being followed."

He gestures dramatically again (his real talent, even moreso than wizardry). "Outside these walls, on the treacherous labyrinth between here and the manor house where you will be spending the next few days, are many perils too. The oil-powered transport vehicles and their erratic movements - driven by fools whose attention is often taken up by entrancing moving pictures - are only the most obvious. In many of the back alleys and streets you may encounter aggressive and bestial mundanes whose minds have been deranged by strange and pernicious alchemical substances, shuffling about like zombies, selling their bodies, or fighting over trash. If they see you have any gold on you, they may go mad with desperate greed and attack. If you see an unfamiliar metal object in one of their hands when they do, assume it is a dire threat."

Kinzie McMullins sighs with a sort of bitter amusement as she finishes pulling her elf costume on. "...alright, well, he's actually right about those last bits." You and Milly Cherrywood both blanch slightly.

The initial parade of alien terrors as you enter the 'Neiman Marcus' soon fades. Although discomfiting, there don't seem to be any immediate dangers here, and the swarming mundanes don't pay you any attention, except for some of the males shooting you perverted glances (well... mostly Felice, but a few for each of you).

You have never been talented dealing with children, so them being products of a strange foreign culture doesn't make much difference. Amazingly, many of the older ones aren't even very impressed when you light up the end of your wand or make glowing bubbles of light, calling it a stupid toy. The younger ones are interested though... too interested, as they often run up and try to grab your wand away, and when you don't let them have it, they often start shrieking like banshees, stomping, and throwing things. Most often, a beleagured mother comes over and gives them a cookie or pushes a glowing notepad into their hands to calm them. It is wearing on your nerves terribly and making you wish the dangers here were more direct.

Checking a pocketwatch, you notice it's time for you all to stand in where a huge line of the brats await their turn sitting at Aegidius's knee - he said that he "took care of" the mundane who would normally be in this role and no one would suspect anything was unusual, today, but to watch out for any uniformed Mundanes all the same. You and the other witches do more little deniable tricks for the impatient, snotty (often literally) children and while he speaks to them one at a time.

The bad news is you don't have the time or privacy to talk to Felice, even though she keeps shooting you conspiratorial glances, silently daring you to sneak off - though you do not, in fact, dare. The good news is that Kinzie can't confront you in front of so many uneducated eyes. If this is as bad as things get you suppose you should be grateful... though the look in Aegidius's eyes when he mentioned "the manor" makes you uneasy.