It was the beginning of the semester at UFRGS and, as always, the veterans waited for the freshmen for the usual bad taste jokes, which varied a lot from college to college.

The most playful, in general, were those of medicine and the least of physics, whose pranks were very rare. In the midst of this, there was a range of all kinds of jokes, but some of them were stupid or dangerous and others bordered on sexual harassment and rape. Not once or twice did certain jokes end in disasters and sometimes even death; however, the newcomers never realized these details, perhaps because they were involved with all those novelties.

Igor joined the Electrical Engineering College in February 2016, shortly after the alleged mysterious disappearance of his parents. On the first day, he felt a shock when he came across the most beautiful girl he had ever laid eyes on and his work colleague, on top of that sitting next to him. When their eyes met, she smiled and Igor reciprocated, a little awkwardly. At the beginning of the class, a representative of the academic directory of students invited the freshmen to a party in their honor, arguing that it was important for the integration between everyone.

The party was marked at the Academic Directory and many students attended. Although they played some jokes on the freshmen, they did nothing wrong and the atmosphere was lively and peaceful. The furniture had been removed and the room was large enough to fit everyone comfortably. Next to the entrance, a counter was improvised where the drinks were.

Igor, always shy and somewhat out of place, took the opportunity to observe Eduarda, the freshwoman he was in love with, remembering the frustrated attempt to approach a week before and concluding that it would be an excellent opportunity to try again. She must have been eighteen years old, close to one meter and seventy-five, maybe a little more, green eyes, intense, and light brown hair, wavy, besides a sculptural body. Because of that, she was surrounded by boys who talked to her, most of them veterans, and answered them politely, smiling and drinking moderately. Awkwardly, Igor kept a little away, leaning against the counter and waiting for the right moment.

Seeing that he was watching her, a colleague approached.

"She's really hot, dude," he said softly as a greeting and extending a cup of something that Igor imagined to be anything but healthy. "I'll love to fuck her and will be today. This one will go through everyone's hands, but only the veterans. With you, it will have to be another day."

"I don't drink," Igor said, refusing the cup, "and I think you would have to get her consent to do that, otherwise it's rape."

"Ugh, here you have to drink, dude," the other insisted, raising his voice, "and if you talk to the girl, you will have a big trouble. Come on, take the cup and drink."

Igor felt cornered. He knew he didn't need much of his powers to invoke a superhuman strength capable of killing the strongest of men because he was already very strong by nature. On the other hand, if he did that, he would be entering college on the wrong foot and still making many enemies. Moreover, to make matters worse, he felt a desperate need to save the girl he had fallen in love with. The logical conclusion was that he needed to buy time to avoid resorting to violence. So he asked:

"How will I know if this stuff here," he pointed to the drink, "is not spiked with some chemical?"

"Looking you won't," confirmed the other, mocking, "but you can be sure that it is with a stuff to help you loosen up. Less the girls, of course, because theirs is a sin, you can believe." He finished with a very evil laugh.

Now Igor knew what they intended and felt furious with the mess they planned, a real orgy with the girls. He looked back at Eduarda, all melted, and made the decision to give them the biggest scare of their lives, thanking Ezequiel for teaching him one or two tricks he didn't know.

"So, Dude," said the colleague, interrupting him. "I'm waiting. Are you going to drink or are we going to have to force you?"

"I can't drink," Igor replied, putting his plan into practice and making a nervous face. "I get sick and the drink turns me into a scary monster."

The young wizard took a step back, making a scared face. Worried, he noticed that some girls became overly euphoric while others seemed to have blurred vision and shook their heads trying to force the blurry vision to clear. The academic directory was next to a bar, the "Centro de Vivência." From its door, it would be enough to cross the corridor, open on one side, go down the stairs to the RU and enter on the left in the rounded house and almost all made of glass. That region of the Campus do Vale was a huge sloping lawn that ended in a small stream, already bordering the municipality of Viamão. Igor calculated that it would be there that they would put their nefarious plans into action because, at night, that place was a dark.

The colleague advanced and the young man made a gesture of fleeing. Jaime, Igor came to know the name later, shouted:

"Guys. Look at the guy who doesn't want to drink and knows about the trouble. He's going to snitch. Grab the jerk.

Those who were next to Eduarda were the closest and surrounded him immediately, while Igor pretended to look for escape. The girl, on the other hand, tried to look at them, forcing her vision and saying:

"Leave him alone." Her voice became pasty and heavy, causing surprise in the girl. "You drugged me!"

She staggered and clung to the wall, more and more confused. Igor stumbled down the exit corridor of the directory and they grabbed him, immobilizing the young man. One of them approached and pinched the boy's nose, while another brought a cup with a blue liquid inside and said:

"This one is really strong. Let's go."

With his nose plugged and his head raised by force, he had no alternative but to ingest the drink, which was very strong and burned his throat, causing a lot of coughing. Laughing, the boys finished and let him go. Igor fell on all fours, coughing non-stop, and one of them said, teasing:

"Leave him for Valdinho to make a profit, right, Valdinho?" he pointed to a quiet colleague, in the back of the room. "That way you get a boyfriend."

"You'll see: God punishes," Valdo replied, annoyed and thinking about leaving. In fact, he didn't even know why he had come, since he was always mistreated by his colleagues who mocked his homosexual condition. Deep down, he felt a lack of more interaction with his colleagues and a lack of friends, ending up making the mistake of going to parties where he ended up discriminated, although most of the girls were not like that.

For Igor, the plan was going to work out better than the bill because that small exit corridor prevented direct vision by others. No one else paid attention to the young wizard, but many paid attention to several girls, planning to take them to the lawn and start the party. The first sound he emitted, no one heard because of the music, but the second snore was so loud that it caught everyone's attention, even the drugged ones.

Igor had neutralized the toxins from the drink without difficulty, but he struggled on the floor and snored or growled in a macabre way, sometimes pretending to suffocate, grabbing his face and neck. Wishing to evoke something very scary, he remembered an old movie of Frankenstein and thought the idea was excellent. The six boys who attacked him were the first to see, since they were near the entrance, and they didn't believe their eyes when they came across that. First Igor's arms began to inflate and he screamed with a very deep voice, then it was the turn of the rest of the body to swell and the young man grew in front of their eyes, but with his face hidden. Suddenly, he stopped struggling and screaming or growling, staying quiet.

One of the boys looked at that and then at the beer cup he had in his hand, open-mouthed. He looked back at the front at the exact moment he saw the freshman show his face, but there was nothing left of the student of dreamy eyes and slender body. There, was a real monster, who rose menacingly. The ceiling of the academic directory was just over three meters high and the abomination almost reached it, having to be well over two meters and seventy. The head was someware square, the size of a large bucket of water and the ears looked huge and hairy. The eyes, bloodshot, looked like two ping-pong balls immersed in blood and about to spew lava, showing a lot of dissatisfaction. His arms looked more like towers of massive muscles, bigger than his chest. In his strong and calloused hands, the student who attacked him first was sure that his head would fit with ease. The monster opened his mouth, showing huge yellow teeth with overdeveloped canines and drooling a little, just like a crazy killer could do. Finally, he gave a terrifying roar. He was so big that he almost occupied the two meters wide of the corridor. With both hands, he punched the walls, whose plaster fell on the spot and the floor shook, showing cracks everywhere. The young man looked back at the cup and shouted, scared:

"Did you guys switch the cups?" he dropped his in the air and turned, running to the window, the only possible escape point at the moment. "Run that this is a monster and it might be real."

Without thinking, he threw himself over the glass that shattered on the floor, coming out the other side stumbling, desperate. No one hesitated when the monster appeared in the field of vision of the others and screaming, not even the drugged girls. The creature took another step and the whole room shook, terrifying everyone. As it blocked the only way out of the room, the students began to scream and run from one side to the other, bewildered and not knowing what to do, until they ended up following the first colleague who left through the window. More glass broke and many cut themselves, but no one cared about that. In less than two minutes, there were only four girls left, three of them fainted with fright. When he turned his face to the side, the monster came face to face with the Valdinho, who was paralyzed with fear and with fixed and wide eyes, trying to understand how that was possible because his reason said that such a thing did not exist. The gigantic beast gestured for him to approach.

Igor felt sorry to see his colleague dying of fear, but he needed to keep up appearances and Valdo trembled so much that he could even hear it. He made a new gesture for him to approach, this time imperative, reinforcing the order with a grumble that sounded like thunder. Valdo looked at the window, but the escape route was blocked by Igor on both sides. So he approached the creature, trembling even more and so pale that the wizard felt like laughing and revealing himself. Instead, he pointed to the fainted girls and from his throat sprang a simple phrase, grave, hoarse, scary and difficult to understand:

"Help the girls." He turned his back, freeing the way out and approached Eduarda, who was conscious, but terrified and also paralyzed with fright, unable to even speak.

The girl watched the aberration approach and, despite being drugged, her heart raced. When the huge creature bent down and touched her, feeling those warm and stiff hands touch her body, all her courage left her at once and she lost consciousness, which came in handy for Igor who left the room with the girl, walking quickly to get away from there. When he was far enough away to not be caught, he returned to his normal form and looked at the girl for a few seconds, in love.

Feeling carried, she came to recover a partial consciousness and opened her eyes half unfocused to the face of the colleague. She put her arms around his neck and leaned her head on his shoulder, as if her savior were Orpheus himself. For security reasons, Igor went further into the Campus instead of following the street.

Using his gifts, he kept the girl in the air and took from her pocket the wallet with the documents, finding a card with the address in case of loss. Using his hand in a shell, he projected a faint light, just with the necessary strength to be able to read and obtain the desired information. He held her again and took her home by the fastest method: he disappeared from where he was to reappear in front of the property. He repeated the process and transported himself to the inside, noticing that the house was empty. He found the girl's room without difficulty and laid her on the bed, going to look for something for her to drink when she came to herself. He took a chair, which was next to his desk, and placed it next to the bed, sitting and taking care of her with all attention.

He took one of the girl's hands and, before starting the treatment, kissed her gently, seeing the perfection of her form. Then he tried to concentrate. Her hand began to emit a faint glow with a sky-blue luminosity that pulsed slowly, rising up her arm and spreading smoothly and constantly over the rest of her body. In a few seconds, the whole girl shone and pulsed with more and more force. Fearing that she would wake up and see him, Igor looked at the lamp in the room, focusing his thoughts for a few seconds and leaving the room so dark that she would not be able to see him when she came to.

When he finished, there was no longer any trace of the drug and, shortly after, Eduarda woke up, still disoriented.

Feeling a hand holding hers, she rose frightened, giving a small involuntary scream.

"Who's there?" she asked trembling. "Why is it so dark? Who are you? And that horrible monster!"

With her body trembling, she tried to get up to run away, but she heard a soft voice and felt a slight pressure on her shoulders:

"Calm down, girl," Igor said, using a gentle voice. "You are in your house, in your room and no one did or will do you any harm. I brought you here myself, because they drugged the girls and wanted to abuse them. The effect of the drug is over. I eliminated it and I swear I didn't do anything bad to you."

"But that horrible monster?" she questioned, incredulous. "And that poor boy they attacked, so cute—"

"It must have been from the drug." Igor smiled, happy. "I need to know if you will be okay. Your parents are not at home and I was very worried."

"My parents traveled and only come back on Monday," she replied, feeling much calmer. "Why don't you turn on the light? Are you afraid I'll see your face?"

"More or less." Igor smiled. "Maybe I'm very ugly."

― ☼ ―

UFRGS: Rio Grande Do Sul's Federal University. A. T.

Centro de Vivência: "Center of Living" It is a bar that serves snacks and non-alcoholic drinks, but also serves as a place for meetings and small events. A. N.

RU – Restaurante Universitário. University Restaurant.