Detached

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Andrew McClintock woke up today the same way he did every day. There seemed nothing special about the day to him. It was an utterly ordinary Thursday. What he didn't know was that today, he would be blessed and cursed by a physical change that would forever alter his life.

Andrew is in his third year of studying Potion Craft at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Thaumaturgy. The current semester was nearing its close, and some of his classes were proving difficult for the young man. This morning, he had to attend a class called Alchemical Reagents -- the class that had been causing him the most stress of all. It had caused him enough stress that he hasn't been able to get a good night's sleep for nearly a month, and last night was no exception. This lack of sleep is precisely why, as Andrew prepared for class this morning, he grabbed the wrong binder. Instead of Alchemical Reagents, the binder he grabbed was for Transformative Tinctures.

As the short lecture portion of the class wound down, Professor McGill -- the teacher of the class -- asked the students to concoct a reagent known as Pyroclene, or the Fools' Gold reagent. It was so-called for its ability to, at the uttering of a single word, turn iron into -- and back from -- something that looked a remarkably lot like gold. McGill explained that it did this by gaining the activation energy required for the chemical process from the specific vibrations of the utterance.

Soon, the students were all working hard, mixing ingredients and muttering magical words. Andrew stared down at his binder, suddenly realizing that he had grabbed the wrong one. "It's alright," he thought to himself, "I think I can recall most of the components this reagent is based on." He begun mixing and evoking, just the same as every other student in the class. Before long, though, he came upon a recipe he could not remember. He remembered that a similar idea had been presented in his Transformative Tinctures class, and begun searching his binder. Finding the correct notes, he followed the prescribed steps, and continued on his way through the process of producing Pyroclene. Once more in the process, he resorted to his Transformative Tinctures notes in place of a recipe he couldn't remember.

When he was finally done with the reagent, he grabbed the small lump of iron waiting on his lab table. Taking a pipette, he filled it with his solution, and carefully applied a single drop to the iron. There was a sudden flash of light accompanied by a plume of smoke. The shock of it made Andrew inhale sharply, breathing in a lungful of the rancid-smelling gas. He coughed and sputtered for a while as his table-mate asked what he had done to get such a strong reaction. "I don't know," he responded, "I did substitute a couple of ingredients, but I don't know why it did that." Figuring he had nothing to lose, he tried to see if his concoction had worked. He muttered the necessary word, "Sectunisco."

Andrew felt a sudden, swift sensation in his crotch. It felt almost like someone had tied a string around the base of his penis and pulled on either end. It wasn't painful, but certainly wasn't comfortable, either. Then, as soon as it appeared, the feeling was gone again. Embarrassed by the feeling, Andrew said nothing, but looked around the room for any other shocked faces and found none. He looked down at his lump of iron and found that it remained unchanged.

Unbeknownst to Andrew, he had discovered a new tincture that combined the teachings of two of his classes, and incidentally had inhaled a strong dose of it. The concoction had changed Andrew forever. He could now detach and reattach his penis at will.