Friday, May 13, 2011

TAOM: Tyler - Magic & Mayhem (Mostly Meyhem)

Tyler headed into a completely random area of the Library, closed his eyes, spun in a circle for several minutes, stopped, selected the book he was pointing at, then sat down to read. He read for a few minutes, then…

"Tyler! You're supposed to be guarding Sumire!"

Tyler groaned.

"Just a second!"

Several hours later….

Tyler finished hammering nails into the door to Sumire's room. He was about to leave when he remembered Sumire would probably need to breathe. He hammered in another nail, then pulled it out, leaving an air hole in the door. Tyler turned to leave…

SHING!

Tyler spun and saw a pencil sticking out from the wall opposite the air hole. He studied the opening for a moment, then the pencil quivering to a halt across from it… and then put up caution tape. He returned to the quiet area he had found and continued to read.

Ten minutes later….

"Emergency missions everyone! Report to the meeting room now!"

Tyler groaned, already slipping out his ping-pong paddle.

Five hours later…

Tyler had returned to the quiet corner and resumed reading his book. He heard some screams from outside, but they didn't sound like anyone was severely injured, so he continued reading. Then…

"GET BACK HERE WITH MY COOKIES!" Tash, Harriet, and Lauren came running through, followed by Adrian. One of the cookies was dropped, and Tyler picked it up and began to snack on it, watching as the three Society Leaders were chased by the fourth around the room and out the door.

He continued reading uninterrupted for half an hour until there was a loud blast of noise coming from about four shelves away. Tyler ran over and found Aster slowly disentangling herself from a mass of duct tape and superglue. She picked up what looked to Tyler like a comic book and began to read.

Tyler watched this strange event, then went back to his own row and delved back into his book. After another few minutes of reading, growling noises started coming from a nearby door. Tyler walked over to the door, noticing the computerized locks. He decided the door was best left alone and went back to reading.

Tyler was still reading his book in peace until Adrian walked in. The Librarian seemed to be looking for something. He continued through the shelves until he saw Aster reading her comic book.

"Aster! What did I say about you reading manga!"

"Oh, so that's what it's called," thought Tyler. "I wonder how it's different from a regular comic book."

After Adrian had chased Aster away from the manga, he noticed Tyler in the corner.

"Hi," said Adrian. Tyler looked up, startled. Well, okay, startled was kind of an understatement. He jumped three feet in the air. Then he realized who was talking to him.

"Hello Adrian." Tyler then returned to reading. Adrian walked over.

"What are you reading?"

"Spellcasting for Dummies. These books are more useful than you'd think."

"Yeah, they usually are…" The Librarian murmured, glancing at the book titles as he searched. "Explain everything so simply…

"They sure do…"

Adrian continued to search, muttering to himself. Tyler ignored this until something poked him in the side of the head.

"Ow! What was that?" Tyler looked around indignantly until he noticed Adrian's tail. He frowned.

"You have a tail?" Tyler looked up and realized that the Librarian also had cat ears.

"Okay, that's really weird." Tyler moved over to another corner so as not to be poked in the head. "Now that I won't get poked, why do you look like someone who went as a cat for Halloween and forgot to take off their costume?"

"Some spell that Tash put on me." Then the two Agents heard Tash screaming something about bladed pendulums. Adrian looked around, suddenly quite pale-looking.

"Librarian Art 7; Mystery Vanish!" Adrian threw down a smoke pellet and disappeared in a puff of smoke. When Tyler was done coughing, Adrian was gone.

"Hmmm, guess it worked." Then Tyler heard a moan from behind him. He turned around to see Adrian literally embedded in the wall. Tyler winced.

"That's gotta hurt…"

One hour later….

Thought Marcus walked through the Library, looking for his counterpart, Emotion Marcus. Said entity was running wild through the sci-fi section, screaming like a sugar-high kid on an upside-down roller coaster. Thought Marcus noticed Tyler still reading in the corner.

"H-hey T-t-tyler, have y-you seen E-e-emotion M-marcus?"

"No idea, but judging by the sound of the screams, he probably went thataway," replied the junior Society member. Thought Marcus walked off in search of his copy.

After three more visitors had disturbed Tyler's reading, he had flipped to the index in the book, found a spell for silence, and promptly used it. Unfortunately, he had mispronounced the incantation and the area inside the field was now giving off an angry buzz. However, this didn't bother Tyler. At least the buzz was consistent.

After another few hours, he had finally finished his book. He dispelled the silence field and was about to leave his corner when he noticed another book on the wall….

"HEY, DUMMY, YOU ONLY FINISHED THE BOOK ON HOW MAGIC WORKED AND CAN BE LEARNED A FEW WEAK SPELLS! THIS IS WHERE IT'S AT, SO GET READIN'!"

Naturally, Tyler returned his first book, picked up the second one, plopped himself down, recast his silence spell, and resumed reading.

Adrian was running for his life through the Library. No, not from Silver or Mary-Ann. From a very,very, angry Tash. Not: "You played a prank and I'll play one on you," angry. This was more like, "I'm going to kill you so start running," angry. She had tried to take one of his remaining cookies, and a bladed pendulum had shredded her hat into…. well, shreds.

This really ticked her off. Adrian skidded a corner into the how-to area, where Tyler was learning how to make writing utensils fight each other to the death. At the moment, he was pitting a thin pencil against a stainless-steel pen. The pen had a heavy right sweep, but the pencil was dodging almost every attack aimed at it. Finally, Tyler got bored and swiped the two writing implements off the table, returning them to their usual inanimate state. He was about to try another spell that would supposedly create a flash of green light when Adrian tore through the area, followed by a nothing-less-than-murderous-looking Tash.

Just as Tash was about to attack Adrian with a vicious blast of fire, the two Marcuses slammed into each other, Tyler cast his flash spell at an unusual level of volume, and Adrian tried his Mystery Vanish. The combined blast left Tash, Adrian, Marcus, and Tyler half-blind, singed, gelatinous, and stuck in a wall. By the time they had all unstuck themselves (Not easy to do as living Jell-O), Tash had stopped being mad at Adrian, Adrian had given up running for his life, Marcus was already bored of being one person again, and Tyler had gotten over his shellshock from being jammed into a wall.

However, they were all still pretty much liquid, thanks to the fusion blast from Marcus' talisman. Marcus was the first to solidify. He walked off, slightly dizzy. Next was Tash, who dragged Adrian out of the wall and then hauled him away so they could make-up 'properly', as she put it. Tyler slowly reformed, then continued reading his book.

Tyler was still reading his book when Willie walked by, muttering something about being a main character. Tyler chose to ignore this.

Instead, he started practicing an offensive spell that would shoot a burst of purple light at the desired point, up to 20 feet away. At least, that's what it was supposed to do. Tyler kept missing the paper cup he was using a target, and the magic would fizzle out before hitting anything. After his twentieth try, he finally hit the cup, sending it flying off the table with a scorch mark where the magic had hit.

He then started working on a spell that would project a beam of red light in front of the caster to light a path. Next was a spell to, hopefully, toss a white sphere of energy which would instantly solidify upon contact with anything. Tyler began practicing on the cup again. This time, the problem had nothing to do with Tyler's ability to control magic, but his pathetic throwing arm. His first throw flew over the cup, his second fell short. His third shot send the cup spinning into the air, then landing on Tyler's head like a dunce cap.

Many hours later…..

Tyler had finally finished the second book, after accidentally setting himself on fire three times.

He put down the book, then realized that it was almost midnight. Tyler put his book away, and slowly walked back to his room. Even then, he didn't sleep. He stayed up until one, memorizing the various spells he had learned. When he finally slept, his dreams were filled with flashes of light and darkness, color and gray.

"Of course, that's pretty much the norm for me, I have dreams like that every night."

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