Outsiders Pt. 01

He took stock of his situation. His clothes were all clean and his whole house was, too. He and his cat were both well fed. The magical spells flowing inside him made him as giddy as a schoolchild, but he was a man grown and questions were piling up in his mind, waiting for the rush of novelty to wear off so they could get their turn. He needed to know if his magical power came with a price and what that price was. No one ever got anything without giving up something in return.

Ben sat down at his desk and began to make a list of the spells that were coursing through his body. The knowledge of the spells just appeared in his mind, as if the spells themselves were instructing him. Every spell told him it had a vocal component, meaning they had to be cast by speaking magical words. Nearly all of them also had a somatic component, which meant that he'd have to make the appropriate gestures to release them. Some also had a material component to them and that meant he'd need something to use as a focus for casting them. The Fireball spell, for instance, required a ball of bat guano and sulfur. Ben sighed unhappily at the thought of waving his arms around and straining his voice box to cast a spell. Those weren't exactly discreet requirements.

He finished his list within minutes and looked at it in suspicion. The forty-two items on it made up a strangely familiar list of D&D spells. Ben's jaw dropped as he realized those forty-two spells were the exact same spells his sorcerer character had in the game he and his friends had finished last night, just minutes before he had been hit by lightning. In fact, he had been holding his character sheet and spell list in one hand and his phone with photos of the same in the other, when he had been struck by lightning.

Ben realized he had been transformed into his character by the lightning strike. There was no other possible explanation for it. "Well," he told himself, running his hand over his T-shirt, "I could just be suffering from an elaborate delusion, but I don't think so." The fact that his burns had magically healed up in hours was further proof of it. His character had the Regeneration feat, a house-ruled feat in his group of friends, that allowed for a character to spontaneously heal 5 hit points of physical damage per hour.

He knew he should be very worried about his transformation, but he couldn't quite let go of the wonder and joy his magic instilled in him. They kept bubbling up and taking over. "Real magic," he said aloud. "I've actually got actual, frakking magic. Wow!" Somehow, he had been chosen to receive this wonderful gift and that thought made him gloss over all the weirdness. Deep down inside, he started to feel special, for the very first time in his life.

His spirits soared in joy as he realized he could undo his current, financial predicament with a careful application of some of the spells he now knew. He probably didn't even need to work ever again in his whole life, not with actual magical power at his disposal. Ben's laugh and mirth settled down as he took a good look at his spell list.

If he was really a sorcerer, then he was stuck with the spells he knew. He couldn't just pick up the spell section of the Player's Handbook and use it as a grimoire, casting spells at will. "Fudge," he whispered bitterly, noticing the first drawback of his newfound power. There were some very nifty and useful spells in the Handbook, but he couldn't cast them. His spells were mostly meant for destruction, with a large area of effect. His character's in-game nickname had been Air Force, cause he'd cast the Fly spell on himself and then rain destruction on their enemies from above.

He remembered his character could only cast one spell per turn. He had felt the spells stop flowing through him for a few seconds after each casting, so he concluded that was how that D&D restriction manifested itself in the real world. A three-second cool down period. He shrugged. In exchange for actual magical power, it was more than acceptable.

Ben took another look at the spell list. His spell list. The spells on it were divided into ten levels, ranging from zero to nine, according to their power. Zeroth level spells were small and quaint, like the ones he had already used, and Wish and Time Stop were the ninth level spells he knew. As a sorcerer, he didn't have to prepare spells, or pray for them, he'd just cast them at will.

His spells were flowing inside him and he merely had to use the magical words, and gestures and material foci where needed, to draw them out of him and into the real world. He had no idea how to make any other magic happen.

He was limited as to how many times he could cast spells of certain strength per day. For each spell level, he had an exact number of castings per day, but total freedom as to which of his known spells he could cast and how often. He could, for instance, cast ninth level spells only four times before he needed to get a full night's rest. That meant that he could cast four Wish spells, or four Time Stops, or any combination of the two. He couldn't cast five ninth level spells in a day.

The only way for him to cast a spell more often that his set limit was to use up his ability to cast a spell of a higher level. He had 64 castings of spells in a day, divided up between spell levels. He couldn't use more than 4 of the 64 castings he had in him to cast the ninth level spells, but he could use all 64 castings to cast a tiny spell like Mending, that he had used to fix his clothes this morning. He concentrated on that spell to see if he could use it to make money.

"Fudge," he muttered into his chin in disappointment. It was quite limited. He could only seamlessly fix one item per casting, provided the item weighed less than one pound. His thin, summer pants had barely squeezed in under the limit. He guessed he might be able to use the spell to fix women's clothes, or shoes, but he didn't really have the time to go and build up a repairs business from scratch. Not if he was going to make the fall semester tuition deadline.

Ben found himself asking the question of whether or not he was going to actually go on with his college education. He had magical power, there was no need for him to get an education and a career. He suspected he could have anything he ever wanted, he'd just have to think up a way to use his spells to achieve it. He pulled the plug on that line of thinking pretty quick. There were too many unknowns about his sudden transformation into an honest-to-goodness sorcerer. It came to him without warning, or provocation, and it might leave just as sudden. He'd be wise to actually finish college and get a degree and then find a job.

He found himself wishing he had his character's profession, a jeweler. As soon as he thought that, he realized he knew how to work with jewelry. His jaw dropped. He took the Player's Handbook off the shelf by the desk and looked up the chapter on skills. To the best of Ben's ability to recollect, he had put nineteen ranks into the Profession: jeweler skill of his character and that meant that, depending on how a twenty-sided die rolled, he could make between 10 and 20 gold pieces a week by working as a jeweler. He didn't know how to convert gold pieces to dollars. But he did know how to work with jewelry. He toyed with the idea of quitting his high paying but very stressful IT job and looking for work in a jeweler's, but he decided to first see everything else that he had at his disposal.

He reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a blank character sheet. He tried to recall the exact statistics, skills, feats and abilities his character had had and set them down in writing. It took him a while to be one hundred percent sure about the exact numbers in every category, but he took an extended trip through his memories of the game and finally felt sure he had listed everything. He smiled as he remembered his character had the Silent Spell and the Still Spell metamagic feats. They allowed for him to cast spells without chants or movements, but he had to use up a spell slot reserved for a higher level spell to cast them with and the casting would last longer than usually.

As far as ways to make money in the real world, his option were few. He had the Wish spell which allowed him to work miracles and even undo death. He could also use it to create something that's worth up to 25000 gold pieces, but it cost 5000 experience points to cast. Ben had no idea what experience points were in real life and he decided he'd never like to find out if they translated to memories. He didn't want to trade memories or knowledge for a thing. For the same reason he discounted his skills in crafting potions and magical items. They all cost experience points as well. Ben couldn't imagine any magic item or potion that was worth him becoming an amnesiac, or worse.

The rest of his skills made him very capable in recognizing magic at a mere glance, which was probably why he had immediately identified Felix as his familiar, keeping his cool under fire and bluffing. As in lying. He had 22 ranks in the Bluff skill. In the game, it had made him a very convincing liar. His hopes floundered. He didn't exactly know how to make money by just plain lying and he didn't particularly want to. That had been Krista's thing.

He had the spell Ethereal Jaunt on his spell list and it allowed for him to make himself invisible and intangible and able to pass through solid objects and living things. He could cast it on himself and float into a bank vault to help himself to as much cash as he wanted. He sighed and shook his head, disapprovingly. That would be stealing and Mr. and Mrs. Kidder didn't raise a thief.

Ben sighed in frustration. There were so many nice and useful spells in the manual and he was stuck with these. "Darn," Ben mumbled. If he had known he'd get struck by lightning, he would have picked different spells. "But if I had picked different spells, we wouldn't have gotten so far along in the game and we probably wouldn't have gotten together last night to play in the first place. Darn it!"

A well fed and happy Felix jumped up on Ben's desk and licked away at his own whiskers. "Now, this here is where things abandoned all semblance of logic and rules," Ben said, looking at his cat. "I can kind of get that I'm transformed into a sorcerer, lightning struck me, but how come you're transformed into my familiar? I didn't do what the book says I should do to get a familiar. I have to spend 100 gold pieces worth of magical materials and meditate for 24 hours to get a familiar. I didn't do that with you."

"Actually, you kinda did, Boss," Felix said, "if I've been able to piece together your story with Krista correctly."

"Wait, what do you mean," Ben asked.

"Well, Krista got you to give her access to your bank account," Felix said, "and she cleaned you out. Took twenty thousand dollars, right, Boss?"

"Twenty thousand seven hundred and two dollars and sixty-three cents," Ben replied.

"Right, that much," Felix said. "And after she took all that dough, she left you in your dorm room to spend the following day just daydreaming about the kitten you were going to get from the shelter - me - and how taking care of that kitten was finally going to get you into her pants, right, Boss? Seems to me that fulfilled the requirements. You meditated for a day and you got taken for at least 100 gold pieces."

Ben chewed on his lip in frustration. Felix's theory sounded plausible, but it hardly registered on his mental radar. Thoughts of Krista took up all his concentration. Krista had been the hottest chick to ever speak to him in person. Ben had rarely managed to gather up the nerve to ask girls out and, whenever he did, they'd laugh at him like he was some kind of freak for even thinking he was worthy of dating them. He could never understand their behavior. He had been nice, courteous, even chivalrous towards them and they'd act like he was a leper if he tried to be more than a friend.

Krista had been different. She had treated him like a human being. She had even laughed at his jokes and agreed to go out with him. He had been giddy whenever he was with her and anxious to see her whenever they had parted. He had been so sure she'd be his first girl that he had glossed over the fact that she had asked him for his social security number to put on a form to adopt a kitten. After she had left with his parents' money, he had spent days pining after her, not even suspecting for a moment that she might have robbed him. When he finally found out the truth, he was gutted.

Krista had toyed with him for weeks, expertly spinning him around her little finger. He hadn't even gotten to kiss her properly on the lips once in all that time. She had teased him to the point of madness, conned him out of his college tuition money and then vanished right before Valentine's Day, leaving him with a kitten that would grow up to become Felix, his talking familiar. She also used his social security number and personal information to take out a number of credit cards in his name and maxed them all out in record time.

As gutted as he had been at finding out that she had robbed him, he had immediately suspected that she might have done the credit card thing as well and reacted quickly. He had gotten in touch with a law office that did pro bono work with victims of credit card fraud and they wasted no time in confirming his suspicions. They also helped him clear his name, which was easy as he was the one that reported the abuse in the first place. He now had a clean credit history, but he had had to wait weeks for all the paperwork to go through and make it official.

That time had been pure hell for him as he kept envisioning the evil credit firms laughing in his face and demanding he pay for Krista's spending. He had had nightmares about them threatening to call his parents if he didn't pay and he had nothing to pay them with. Fortunately, all of those fears had been unfounded.

After he had gotten the all clear, he felt a sense of relief, but it was short-lived. He was still broke and his fears gave way to his self-recriminations. He felt like an idiot for having trusted her and for not realizing he was being played. He would reproach himself for thinking that he was someone a beautiful, young woman like Krista, if that was even her real name, would ever waste her time on. Then he would try to convince himself that it wasn't his fault that he had trusted a fellow human being and that the whole thing was entirely her fault for having robbed him. He'd never quite manage to sell himself that particular pitch, no matter how well reasoned he could make it.

Ben shook his head, as if to clear the dark thoughts that were gathering inside, and said, "Yeah, that's about right. Twenty thousand seven hundred and two dollars and sixty-three cents and a day of dreams." His anger was rising. "That's what she took from me. My money, my dreams and my future. That darn...!" He growled in frustration and wrath. He swept the knickknacks off his desk, sending them flying every which way about the room.

Felix crouched down on his corner of the desk in alarm. "Well, Boss, if that's how you feel," Felix said, "then I guess we'll talk about this a little later."

"Talk about what," Ben barked out, still in the grips of his impotent rage.

"Oh, nothing much, Boss, just the fact that I'm a girl cat," Felix said, "and not a tomcat."

"What?"

"Yeah," Felix drawled. "I was gonna say something this morning, but you looked so tired, Boss, and I was so hungry. Anyway, I'm not a boy cat, I'm a girl cat." Ben stared at his familiar. "Just thought you should know, Boss. You know? In case you wanna give me a girl's name, or something. Cause, I've recently discovered that Felix is a strictly boy name, not a unisex name." Ben shifted in his seat. "So, if you wanted to give me a female name, I'd be cool with it, but you don't have to, Boss! Felix is perfectly fine with me, Boss." Felix looked nervously at her stone-faced master. "I mean, why'd I want a stinking girl's name? Pfffft, girls! Heh, fucking bitches, amirite, Boss? Eh?"

Ben kept looking at his cat familiar in silence for a few more seconds, just sensing the growing fear in her. It made him feel profoundly uncomfortable. He never liked the idea of causing pain or suffering. He never wanted to scare people. A part of him did want to hurt a girl, he realized, but for all of his frustration and anger at the rejection he'd suffered at the hands of the females of his species, he only really wanted to hurt one girl. Krista. If he had her in his grasp right now, he'd punish her. He'd punish the living daylights out of her. And he'd get her to give him back the money she stole.

He looked down at his character sheet and saw the spell called Discern Location. It allowed for him to know the exact location of a person he had seen. The previous spell on the list was Greater Teleport, a spell that allowed him to instantly teleport himself and up to six other willing people to any location he could envision in enough detail. The two spells had been instrumental in finishing the campaign with his friends and now he realized he could use them to win in real life, too. He jumped in his seat and laughed out loud. He was going to go and get Krista and have his vengeance on her for robbing him and leaving him to stew in fear for weeks.

Felix crouched even lower at Ben's laughter and meekly chuckled. "Right," the cat said. "Let's just pretend I didn't say anything."

Ben got his laughter under control and waved at Felix. "Oh, relax, would you," he said. "I'm not angry at you." Felix sighed in relief. "There's only one person I'm angry with, Felix, and I'm gonna go and get her, right now!" Ben giggled gladly and rubbed his hands together.

"Oh, cool," Felix said.

"As for your name," Ben said, "what would you want it to be?"

"Um, I dunno," Felix said.

"How about... Felicia," Ben asked.

The cat cocked her head and said, "Yeah. I like it. Felicia. That'd be a great name!"

"Alright then," Ben said. "You're Felicia from now on!"

"Thanks, Boss," Felicia said. "So, what's the plan with this girl that took your money?" Ben tapped a spell on his spell list and smiled smugly. Felicia lowered her head towards the paper and then looked up at him. "Dominate Person. What's that do?"

"Exactly what it says," Ben said. "It allows me to dominate a person's mind for nineteen days through a telepathic link that it establishes. My character had used it a few times in our campaign. If I concentrate on the dominated person's mind, I can even know what they are doing and experiencing. It's not like I was right there with them, but I can get a good enough sense of what's going on and how they're reacting to it."

"Do you think you will be able to dominate Krista's mind," Felicia asked. "She's got to have a sharp wit, if she's so slick a con artist at her age."

Ben snorted dismissively. "Of course I can dominate her mind. The spell has a range of 70 feet, so I don't even have to be in the same room as her to do it. All she has to do is not have a strong enough willpower to defend against it. If the stats from the game are to be believed, then Krista would need to get real lucky to not fall prey to it. Like, top five percent lucky." Ben frowned and squinted in remembrance. "Or be really, really wise. The wisdom stat gives bonuses to willpower rolls. Hm, I don't think Krista is wise enough. Besides, even if she manages to resist the spell once, I can cast fifth level spells seven times a day and I can use the slots for the higher level spells to cast it, too. Unless she can slip out of my mental grasp some twenty-odd times, she's mine!" Ben laughed gleefully.

"Once you get her, she's yours for nineteen days," Felicia asked, "to do with her as you like, no limits?"