"All right, settle down!"
Rodney Hassle was trying to get all of the freshmen and sophomores in the lobby of Unnamed University to settle down, but it was turning out to be, well, his last name.
"People!" he shouted, which somehow shut the whole room up. "I have an intriguing photograph.
"Yeah, why should I care?" asked Shelby Taylor. "It's not like you've ever shared anything of importance."
"Hey," he retorted, "I said that Ching was a criminal, and I was right. Look."
He took out his phone and showed a photo to the people in the lobby. Shocked, they saw a picture of one of the smartest Freshmen in the school, Hero Jones...flying a broomstick!
"Are we sure this is real?" asked a dubious Brick Rock.
"Hey," replied Rodney, "I don't lie. I overreact; I don't lie."
"He's right, unfortunately," siad Susan Gripe, the statistic whiz. "The circumstantial odds of Hero Jones not being a witch are negligible."
"We must use reason," retorted Vance Dubois. "Reason is the most reasonable path."
"I am using reason," replied Susan. "It's just an unusual conclusion."
"Fine," replied Jane Wellington, Vance's boyfriend and the most influential sophomore at the school. "It's got to be true."
"We must confront the witch!" shouted Rodney. Everyone chanted, "Confront the witch! Confront the witch! Confront the witch!" as they marched to their rooms, grabbed whatever looked like the best weapon (or, in Vance's case, a cheese grater), and regrouped outside of Hero's room. With a mighty kick, university bully Joshua Johnson knocked down the door to Hero's dormitory.
Everyone was awed by the sheer irregularity of Hero's room. It had wierd sybols drawn on the walls and an empty birdcage sitting on a desk in the corner. Suddenly the door slammed shut behind them and their intended victim, Hero, entered the room.
"To what do I owe this rude intrusion?" asked Hero, eyeing the torch held by Rodney Hassle.
"We know you're a witch!" said the stupidly brave Rodney. "You must pay for your crimes!"
"Yeah!" cheered the group, mostly just interested in the intense violence.
"What crimes?" retorted Hero. "I've harmed no one!"
"Stop, temptress!" shouted Rodney. "We have come to silence your dark magic!"
"Hah," chucked Hero. "Just one question. If anyone here is not here to kill me, please leave the room now."
Nobody moved.
"Fine, then," said Hero, apparently dejected. "But did you really think that, if I indeed did have some sort of magic, I could be killed this easily? You're lucky I'm the nice one," she added ominously.
She raised her arms, and a wind suddenly rushed through the room, lifting glowing symbols off the walls and causing them to spin around the group. "This is an experimental spell, so I'm glad I managed to find some deserving test subjects!"
Realizing their foolishness too late, everyone in the crowd - except for Rodney - tried to leave, only to find, to their utter dismay, that the now rapidly spinning symbols acted as a barrier to their escape.
"HAPAALU NATASUNI!" shouted Hero, and the group was blinded by a bright light.
An excerpt from the diary of Julia Blue:
I guess I wasn't expecting Rodney to actually be right. It all was so sudden - Rodney showing us the picture, us storming Hero's dorm, the moving symbols - and I didn't know what to think. Then I realized that wasn't my biggest problem.
The whole world was my biggest problem. At this point in my life - after my first boyfriend turned out to be a werewolf and my cousin subsequently developed the ability shoot lasers out of his eyes - I wasn't really surprised by much. What did surprise me, though was that everything seemed so much bigger. I've by now learned not to lose my head in wierd situations, so I quickly figured out that Hero had cast a shrinking spell.
I don't know a lot about magic or the physics of shrinking, but one thing I do know is people. I'm pretty sure that, if Hero were really some messed-up freak, our lives were practically over no matter what we tried to do. My only option, then, was to assume, for the time being, that she still had a conscience.
"Hero," I said, "what's going on? Why are you doing this to us?"
Then I realized I had forgotton what we were doing. "I'm protecting myself," she replied. I realized our two big mistakes - assuming that she was initially out to hurt us and cornering her in a position of power. We had driven an innocent person to drastic measures, and we deserved almost anything she could throw at us.
Almost.
The last thing I remember about that moment was a green gas filling the room at floor level.
Hero had just finished putting the last of her shrunken attackers in the large aquarium at the side of the room. She was still trying to wrap her head around what happened. Was she really that careless? More importantly, did she really strike that level of panic into peoples' hearts?
No, she steadied herself, I'm in the right. They're in the wrong.
She went through the list one more time:
Rodney Hassle, sophomore. Journalist with a journalistic eye for trouble and extremism.
Shelbey Taylor, sophomore. Slightly detached from reality, just enough to get the big picture, just too much to share it.
Brick Rock, freshman. Star quarterback for the lowest level of football.
Susan Gripe, freshman. Reasonable and philosophying to a fault. Nearly always overthinks.
Vance Dubois, sophomore. Narrow-minded, focus on history but not skilled enough to achieve dream job of professor.
Jane Wellington, sohomore. Considered the hottest and most popular girl on campus. Shy and portrays a character.
Patrick O'Reilley, sophomore. Irish exchange student. Strange - he had already known that she was a witch.
Julia Blue, freshman.
Eric and Erin Hellsworth, freshmen. Identical personalities.
Robert Truth and Rachel Dare, sophomores. Geniuses together, imbeciles apart.
Eileen Finch. Who exactly is Eileen Finch?
Hero then proceeded to enter her laboratory through an invisible door in the back of the room. She poured a green liquid into a metal box and threw a piece of steak into the liquid. She then reviewed a chart of symbols and measurements. Assured that everything had worked properly, she sat down and began to calculate who knows what.