They collectively decided not to tell Garaham about her Academy infiltration plan. More precisely: Banshee threatened vile repercussions if the thing would leak from anyone of them. And she reminded it quite clearly to both her companions, as they went to meet their Chief.

«Jeez, been there for a day and I already want to run. We just sat at desks for the whole morning studying on tomes. On tomes!»

«What did you expect?» Chico, the only one who had passed through Academy, and with flying colours, tried to hide his amusement.

«I dunno! More practice? Great halls? Magical environments? Actual magic?»

«The magic you're born with, you learn to master almost entirely by your own, thanks to your Familiar. The Academy mostly lets you study disciplines of magic that you weren't born with, and that means a whole lot of studying even before you can think to put something into practice.»

«But I'm in all Advanced courses! Shouldn't they be practical?»

«On the contrary. They're even more theoretical, if you want to practice what you learned you can book a lab with other people and go shoot at dummies in the Sahara or something like that. But don't think for a second that you'll be allowed to do any magic in class. Rituals, sometimes, in the advanced classes, and only in Summon. Because, you know, that's basically all it does.» Chico explained, with an overly satisfied voice, as each of his words let Banshee's world crumble a little more into depression. Magic School was as underwhelming as any other school.

The air in Garaham's office was far from light and breezy. The neon-lit room was even less welcoming than usual. He didn't even raise his head when they entered, painstakingly focused on writing something with a furrowed brow. He finished writing in the rather awkward silence, put a black stamp on the paper, and then moved his hand in the air. A small portion of the papers, with the last stamped one on top, suddenly disappeared. He seemed to realize just now that the three had entered the room.

«You're more quiet than usual. I applaud to that. Let's make this a habit.»

«Chief, ye called me on me cell phone to get us here instead of Displacing us or leaving and angry message in our answering machine, which is why we still have an answering machine and a landline in 2014.» Banshee said. «We're worried.»

«I know. But mala tempora occurrunt and...»

«Gesundheit?»

«Shit hit the fan. But said in fancy latin.» Vopros translated.

«Crude but true translation. Very well. I might have a clue.»

«Ye? From yer office?» Banshee asked. He glared at her.

«I volunteered to take some work of the Internal Affairs on my shoulders. It's good on the resumé, and you never regret helping a Leshrac.» Garaham opened his laptop. This was a peculiar sight indeed, seen that it had the computing power of a brick. But still, it worked well enough, by magic and miracles alone, to summon a video on YouTube. «The task was to review all the last year, year-and-a-half quite viral videos to snuff out, and promptly delete, any trace of magic someone could have filmed by accident and put on the internet thinking it was some, as you young people say, "cool trick."»

«Ye remember you're forty and not seventy-five, right?» Banshee couldn't but comment. He glared again. This time, she fell completely silent.

«It appears that some five months ago, this video had been not all the rage, but had some decent views. Watch.»

After the first moment of shock in discovering that Garaham actually knew what YouTube was, the three proceeded to pay attention to the video itself.

The audio and the title were in Japanese, the voices around the filmmaker were unmistakably oriental too, and it looked like a walking take of a stroll in the center of Boston. Nothing unusual. The cameraman said something that must have been very funny because all the people around were giggling, but all in all it looked like a quite normal holiday video.

Then the video started to become shaky: the Japanese man mounted his phone on a selfie stick, and then proceeded to include in the framing his whole group of friends: three men and two women of indefinite age, and the tall building in the background.

In front of the camera there was just a lot of giggling and waving, smiling and sending kisses to who knew who, but in the background, something was happening. On a large, decorated balcony, on which one could clearly notice tables and chairs from a panoramic restaurant, a tiny black figure slipped over the railing and started falling down.

Banshee and Chico sucked their breath in at the sight, while Vopros kept his usual calm: someone was falling down at least thirty stores towards sudden death. A group of people ran to the railing to watch down, clamoring in the far distance. The Japaneses didn't seem to have noticed anything, but the cameraman kept the framing still enough for them to clearly see what happened after.

Another black, tiny figure jumped up. From the ground towards the falling one. It intercepted it mid-air, around the twentieth story, didn't even slow down, brought it back to the balcony, threw it over the railing, bounced against the story over it and disappeared on another building's roof. This was the moment the Japanese understood they had given their shoulders to the best show in town, turned to watch in that direction, and the video ended.

Garaham closed the laptop.

«So...?» Vopros tried not to sound excessively polemic with his monosyllable, but they were all quite puzzled about what they had just seen

«It's authentic: there is actually someone using magic and it's not a fake.» Garaham started explaining with a matter-of-factly voice.

«Well, here it seems to me you can't see anything of the Mage.» nodded Chico. «So, no-one is in trouble?»

«Here's where you all come up.» Garaham joined his hands in front of his face, now staring directly at them. And even if, in the matter at hand and for once, their consciences were perfectly clean, all the spots there pertinent to other misdeeds started to itch.

«We didn't do that! This was not us!» shouted Banshee on the defensive, being her the most dark-spotted conscience of them all right in that moment. Garaham glared at her. Yet again.

«I know.» he just said, bluntly. «Point is, this is the fifth or sixth video with a dark figure performing some strange magic act. Now, a black disguise is something very common, but something irked me in this particular one. And that was the place.»

«The place?»

«That restaurant is Peppino's. One of the best in town, spectacular view, great food, and it's not even that expensive, for a top notch Italian restaurant.» Garaham explained, with strange extreme detail. «Point is, many of the Order go there. And you know who's one of the Restaurant's investors?»

«Justin D'Yves.» Vopros beat everyone to the push.

«Precisely.»

«So this could be some kind of way to discredit Justin in front of the Council?» Chico asked.

«We'll need more than a low-resolution video taken from the internet, but it's a start for us. Now, go there and find out who the incredibly lucky person is. Let's see if we can get a deposition about his incident.»

«Chief... so we tell him we're mages and stuff?» Chico asked, cautiously.

«The Protocol ensues that, to get a clear information from an important informer, magic can be revealed, if the subject has already been exposed to it. Obviously, it then falls in the hands of the Nameless Division to cover it up if it become dangerous. Pace yourselves, and report to me before any decision.»

«Ye... are working with us?» Banshee's eyes gleamed.

«I am making sure there are no hiccups before the concert.» he corrected her, raising a hand. «if we get something on Justin, he'd probably give us anything he has on Staccato to keep it silent.»

«So, after robbing a D'Yves, now we're going to blackmail him?» Chico paled, slightly. «Chief, aren't you getting this revenge plot a tad too far?»

«Of course, that would be our hail Mary, but it's always better to have a plan B than regrets.» for one moment, just for an instant, Garaham looked like the bright tactician he had been in his best Enforcer years. His hazel eyes had a steel resolve in them, the soft wrinkles in his face subdued with a decisive expression painted on his regular, common features.

«We're on it.» Banshee stepped forward and smiled.

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Hi everyone!
Chapter 15's here, and we have 11 more to the end. We've passed the 700 reads and 51 followers and we couldn't be more happy for this. And also for the wonderful people leaving comments around, they really make our day and motivate us, so, thank you so very much for sticking with us and with our ragtag band of mages diving headfirst into troubles.

As always, any feedback and votes are welcome and such a boon to us!
Thanks, and keep posted!

Lots of love,
Daniel

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